


i have loved the stars too fondly

by tinuviel_tinuviel



Category: Howl Series - Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, gratuitous allusions to the movie/later books, howl quotes shakespeare bc he's a NERD, idiots to found family :), interworld shenanigans, speculation about howlverse magic, stanning michael fisher on main
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:27:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 37,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29268717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinuviel_tinuviel/pseuds/tinuviel_tinuviel
Summary: Sophie had no hope of keeping up with Michael as he chased the star, even with her seven-league boot. He was a flail of limbs and a sploshy sound of madly running feet ahead of her, as the falling star streaked white down the sky. At the speed it had been going it should have hissed into the pools like a doused match long before he reached it, but now it slowed, as though it was moving through honey. She wrestled with her foot, stuck in the seven-league boot, as Michael stalked the star, a paper cutout against its stark white light.“What is it? What do you want?” she could hear it shrill, bobbling nervously.“I only want to catch you,” Michael explained. “I won’t hurt you.”“Get off, you stubborn thing,” Sophie muttered to the boot, and at last wrenched her foot free. She set off stumping toward Michael. The star stared at the boy with frantic, flickering blue eyes.“I could save you if you’d let me catch you,” Michael told it. His voice grew softer as he edged closer. “I know magic. Please—” he said, and then with one quick, darting motion, he closed his hands around it like a child catching a firefly.(in which michael is told to catch a falling star, and so he does.)
Relationships: Calcifer & Sophie Hatter & Howl Pendragon, Michael Fisher & Howl Pendragon, Michael Fisher & Sophie Hatter, Sophie Hatter/Howl Pendragon
Comments: 179
Kudos: 74





	1. In which Michael has trouble with a spell

Sophie had no hope of keeping up with Michael as he chased the star, even with her seven-league boot. He was a flail of limbs and a sploshy sound of madly running feet ahead of her, as the falling star streaked white down the sky. At the speed it had been going it should have hissed into the pools like a doused match long before he reached it, but now it slowed, as though it was moving through honey. She wrestled with her foot, stuck in the seven-league boot, as Michael stalked the star, a paper cutout against its stark white light.

“What is it? What do you want?” she could hear it shrill, bobbling nervously.

“I only want to catch you,” Michael explained. “I won’t hurt you.”

“Get off, you stubborn thing,” Sophie muttered to the boot, and at last wrenched her foot free. She set off stumping toward Michael. The star stared at the boy with frantic, flickering blue eyes.

“I could save you if you’d let me catch you,” Michael told it. His voice grew softer as he edged closer. “I know magic. Please—” he said, and then with one quick, darting motion, he closed his hands around it like a child catching a firefly. Light blazed out, blinding across the water at his feet, and Sophie’s heart stuttered. This didn’t feel right.

“Michael,” she called out warningly, but she was too breathless for her voice to carry, and the sloshing and the sparking and the uneven hammering of her heart drowned out the ever-softer sound of Michael’s voice and the star’s crackling response.  _ “Michael!” _ Her wrinkled hand clamped down on his shoulder just as he turned, and the full blaze of the star made her stumble back with a cry, snatching her hand up to shield her eyes. Her wiry hair frizzed with electricity. A gust of wind flew out across the surface of the marsh, heavy with whispering voices. The light faded and she could hardly see.

“I did it,” Michael breathed. Sophie blinked the black patches from her vision. “Did you see that? I caught a falling star!”

“I saw,” Sophie said. “We should get back to the castle before it goes out.”

“He won’t go out,” Michael said confidently. “I made sure of that.” His teeth flashed white as he smiled. The star’s austere glow made the deep brown of his skin as flat as charcoal, and gave a strange glassy cast to his eyes.

“Oh,” Sophie said.

The star blinked slowly at her. “Who is  _ she?” _ Sophie frowned. There was something familiar about its keening voice.

“This is Sophie,” Michael said. “She lives with us. Sophie, this is Lucine.”

“Nice to meet you,” Sophie said automatically.

“Where do you live?” the star asked. “Is it as wet as here? Is the air all thick and damp?” Its voice reminded her of Calcifer, she realized.

“No, no,” Michael said. “It’s very dry and nice. You’ll like it.” The star looked uncertain.

“I don’t think stars are meant to live down here,” it said.

“What magic did you use to keep it from going out?” Sophie asked Michael.

“Well, wizards are very good at arranging things that aren’t meant to happen,” Michael told the star.

“Michael, what magic did you use to keep Lucine from going out?” Sophie asked, growing suspicious.

He avoided her eyes. “It’s a little complicated.”

“It can’t take longer to explain than I already waited for the silly thing to fall,” she said obstinately. “You can tell me while we find the boots.”

“I really can’t tell you,” Michael said. “It was—messy magic. I had to be fast. But I promise it’s alright.” Before she could prod further, he made a gesture, and Lucine flared, and two wet, floppy objects came hurtling toward them. The sodden seven-league boots landed with a splash at their feet. “Here we are! Let’s get going before you catch a cold.” He offered Sophie his elbow.

She didn’t take it. “You’re slithering out of answering,” she said. “You sound like Howl.” It wasn’t even an insult, though in any other situation it would have been. Cold dread settled in her stomach. “That thing—it’s not a star at all, is it? It’s a fire demon.”

“I am a star,” Lucine insisted. “I lit the sky for thousands of years.”

“But you aren’t anymore, are you?” Sophie asked.

Lucine wavered, and Michael trembled. “Please don’t bully him,” he said, although Sophie felt she’d done nothing of the sort. “He  _ was  _ a star. I think, down here, we would call him a fire demon.”

“And you made a contract with it,” Sophie said.

“I did,” Michael said, pulling on his seven-league boot with a kind of finality.

Filled with foreboding, she refused to be brushed off so easily. Michael was many things, but secretive was not one of them. “What did you promise to it?”

“You don’t want to know—”

“Michael Fisher, tell me right this minute!”

There was a flash and a bang, and Sophie’s words choked in her throat. Lucine was a pillar of fire. Sparks cascaded down into the water with a chorus of hisses. Then the fire demon shrank once more, pulling into itself, until it was a tight ball of flames over Michael’s clenched fist. His brow was beaded with sweat. “I can’t tell you, Sophie. Don’t ask again.” Then, turning on his heel, he set off into the darkness.

Sophie followed the distant twinkle of the star across the marshes, finally catching up with Michael as he slipped off his seven-league boot in the quiet outskirts of Kingsbury. He offered her his arm to lean on as she pulled off her own boot. “I didn’t mean to snap at you,” he said softly.

“I was being too pushy,” she said gruffly. It wasn’t a proper apology, she knew, but she didn’t trust herself to say more. They walked home together, silent but for Lucine’s gentle crackling and the damp slosh of their footsteps. Howl must have come back while they were out; she could hear him in the bathroom when they entered. Michael said something about needing to find a home for Lucine and went upstairs immediately. Sophie collapsed into the chair in front of the fireplace to eat an apple and sort out her thoughts.

“I see you caught something,” Calcifer said.

“Yes. I suppose Michael thinks he can keep it in a box in his room like a caterpillar,” Sophie said, remembering that Calcifer had told them not to go out. Now that she regretted going, this only made her mood worse. “You were a falling star once, weren’t you?”

“Oh, well-spotted,” Calcifer said.

“I don’t know why you sound so irked,” Sophie said irritably. “You were a star until Howl caught you. I’ve finally learned something about your contract—no thanks to you and your useless hints.”

“What you’ve done is make things twice as bad,” Calcifer said heatedly.

“I haven’t done anything!” she snapped. “Howl was the one that assigned that spell.”

Before Calcifer could retort the bathroom door opened and Howl emerged, groomed and glowing and smelling of honeysuckle. Steam spilled around him like fog over the marshes. “Sophie! I thought I heard you accusing me of some sort of wickedness. What have I done now?” He was as radiant as the morning before, in Mrs. Fairfax’s garden.

Her complaints had scattered with the appearance of a new target. Unfortunately, Calcifer didn’t jump in to turn his retort on Howl, only fixing her with baleful eyes. She rallied as he rummaged through the cupboard. “That spell you gave Michael was too hard.”

“Was it? It shouldn’t have been,” he said.

“We were out all night, just working on the first line,” Sophie said severely.

He frowned absently, unhooking the big saucepan and unwrapping a rash of bacon one-handed. “Of course you would be running around with him, in spite of my advice. But I’ll talk to Michael about it after breakfast. Is he upstairs?”

_ He knew what the spell would do, _ Sophie realized.  _ He knew, and he didn’t care. He doesn’t see anything wrong with Michael becoming like him. He sent Michael after the demon—he  _ wanted _ him to become all—all cold, and strange, and wicked. _ Heat rose in her chest. She quivered with anger. “Yes, he’s upstairs, trying to figure out what to do about that star you sent him after!”

The saucepan fell to the floor with a  _ thud. _ “The  _ what?” _

Sophie was gathering a head of steam. “Michael is bright, and the only one in this house with an ounce of sense, but he’s still a child, and you need to be looking after him, not draping yourself over the side of the bathtub and sending him out chasing stars—”

“What in God’s name are you talking about, Sophie?”

“The star! The first line of the spell!” Sophie sputtered. Did he not remember? Creaking upright, she stamped over to the workbench, dug the spell out from beneath their sheaf of notes, and handed it to him. “Go and catch a falling star,” she recited as his glass-marble eyes scanned the page, color falling from his face with every passing second.

“Where did you get this?” he said in a low voice.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “On the bench, where you put it.”

“This isn’t a spell.” He shook the paper at her. “It’s not even from this world! Where—how—” She had never seen him this inarticulate, or half as angry. He snapped his long fingers. “You went through the door black-down, didn’t you? Stuck your long nose through, after I told you not to?”

“My finger, actually,” she said.

“Of course you did. Heaven forbid you actually mind your own business, for once in your unfortunately long life!”

“You’re not really mad at her,” Calcifer said.

“On the contrary, I am very mad at her,” Howl said.  _ Good! _ Sophie thought. It was about time. “Bedevil me all you want, but dragging Michael in is going too far.”

“I didn’t drag him into anything,” she shouted. “You assigned the spell!”

“It’s not a spell! It doesn’t even  _ look _ like a spell!” he bellowed.

“How are we supposed to know that? You’re the only wizard here,” she fired back.

His mouth flapped dumbly, like a fish’s. Wheeling around, he stabbed his finger at Calcifer, so near the flames he should have been burned. “You let her in. Did you know this would happen?”

“You know I didn’t.”

“But you knew Sophie went to Wales, and you didn’t tell me!”

“She stuck one finger through the door—and you knew she would, soon enough,” Calcifer retorted. “How was I to know the spells got swapped?”

“Why does it matter? You caught a star too, didn’t you?” Sophie demanded. This was now the opposite of her original point, but she was in too deep to notice.

“That’s different. I was like this before I—” He floundered for words, momentarily speechless, and then wrinkled his nose. “Before I met Calcifer.” At some point the room had become sweltering hot. It was as hard to breathe as the hour before a storm. “It’s dangerous for a human to deal with fire demons. It changes them.”

“Not if you just talk to a fire demon,” Calcifer reassured her. “You’re safe.”

“You mean if a human makes a contract with a fire demon,” Sophie guessed, then shot a look of alarm at Howl. She didn’t want to reveal her deal with Calcifer. But he didn’t seem suspicious. In fact, she wasn’t sure he heard her at all. He was very pale.

“Michael must have made a contract too,” Calcifer said. “And you can’t do that without losing something.”

“He’s in trouble,” Sophie said.

“And he doesn’t know,” Howl said. “I never told him the danger. I thought if he was like me, it would only encourage him.” He wavered like a flame.

“Sit down before you fall over,” Sophie said testily. Awfully typical that she, the one who had tramped around all night and was ninety years old besides, was shepherding Howl into the chair. Sleeves fluttering, he collapsed onto the seat with the dejected dignity of a punctured dirigible. “Michael isn’t like you, you know. He only caught the star because he thought you wanted him to.”

He laughed mirthlessly. “What a comfort you are, dear Sophie! You’re right, though, he wasn’t much like me. But like Calcifer said, he’s lost something tonight.”

It was obvious from their studied vagueness that both Howl and Calcifer were trying desperately to communicate something important, but the only thing she could figure out was that something terrible had happened to Michael, and she had let it happen.

“What was all that shouting about?” Michael called, clattering downstairs with his arms full of a contraption made of silver, wires, and tightly bound scrolls of paper. In it nestled Lucine, burning a pale gold that returned some of the color to the boy’s face. He beamed when he saw the gathering by the hearth. “Howl! Did Sophie tell you I caught a star for your spell?”

Howl gave a weak smile. “She did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lucine is a he bc michael is a he and i've decided that fire demons go with their magician's pronouns for convenience (aka calcifer doesn't know what a gender is and this point he's afraid to ask)  
> i've been working on this fic for a while and i'm SO excited to share! infinite thanks to lyd and my sister for their editing help. please please comment, i would love to hear your thoughts, and i'll see you around :D


	2. In which Sophie commits petty larceny

Sophie was not surprised that Howl was too cowardly to explain the situation to Michael, but she was irritated by his silence as Michael introduced Lucine to the various residents of the castle. The new fire demon was far less talkative than Calcifer, preferring to blink at all the new sights with anxious, pale blue eyes. Howl and Sophie had a brief tussle over the frying pan, which Sophie won, leaving Howl to question his apprentice half-heartedly about the events of the previous night. Sophie listened closely for any signs from Michael that something was off.

The boy had dozens of new ideas about possible ways to fulfill the remaining lines of the not-spell. “Actually, I was thinking we could put a rest to that spell for now,” Howl said. Sophie shot him a glare.  _ Coward. _ Of course he didn’t want to admit that a mistake had been made. “Why don’t you practice the summoning spell you were having trouble with a few weeks ago?”

“I figured that one out,” Michael said. He made a gesture, and the skull flew across the room into his hand. With a grin, he said, “See?”

“Oh!” said Howl.

“Being bonded to Lucine makes magic so much easier,” Michael said wonderingly. “It’s like I’ve been trying to read in a dark room, and then someone lit a lamp. I really think I’m ready for the rest of this spell.” Howl looked trapped. Useless man.

Sophie dumped the panful of eggs onto Michael’s plate. “Howl, I need to talk to you. In the bathroom,” she said firmly. Four sets of eyes turned on her. “Now,” she added.

“Has he been leaving a mess in there?” Calcifer asked.

“He’s—he’s leaving his jars too close to the edge of the shelf,” she said.

Howl cottoned on quickly. “I told you, you aren’t to try to clean the shelf,” he said, rising gracefully and letting her tug him by the sleeve into the bathroom.

“I haven’t touched the shelf, and good thing, too. The second I do this hair oil is going to fall,” she snipped. She pulled the door shut behind them before dropping both his sleeve and the charade. “You need to tell him.”

“Tell him what?”

She very nearly strangled him. “Tell him what’s happened!”

“Dear Sophie, I don’t  _ know _ what happened.” She started to protest and he raised a finger. “It’s clear that the real spell got swapped for that poem when you opened the door black-down, but we don’t know why, or what it means. I’ve got to investigate some things first.”

“Well, at least tell him that you made a mistake and he needs to release the fire demon.”

He looked pointedly up. “Of course, he can just release the fire demon. Why didn’t I think of that, in all the time I’ve spent trying to figure out how to release my fire demon? Clever Sophie, you make everything so simple.”

“Don’t be cheeky, young man,” Sophie said.

“I’ll tell him, in due time. I have a plan. Or,” he said, seeing her dubious expression, “I  _ will. _ I just need to find the rest of that poem. Let that suffice, most forcible Feeble.” He checked his reflection, smoothing his hair and flicking his glittering red earrings, then swept out into the front room. “I have some errands to run today,” he announced.

“And I’m going with him,” Sophie said. He shot her a look of outrage.

“Can I come?” Michael asked.

“Why not?” he said, throwing his hands up. “Maybe it’s for the best. Michael, Sophie, prepare to meet my sister.”

“I don’t think your sister was very happy to see us,” Michael said in a small voice.

Howl snorted. It was early morning in this world—and in Ingary, too, Sophie supposed, although the sleepless night had left her sense of time hazy—and Howl’s sister (Megan, he called her) was in both a hurry and a foul mood as she chased her children out the door to go to school. Her son Neil had lost some homework and found a strange paper, which Howl convinced the boy to hand over with the mysterious promise of  _ more games.  _ The whole meeting was thoroughly strange. Megan was some kind of inventor, if the multitude of whirring devices in her home were anything to go by, and had little regard for Howl’s magical arts. It did not seem to help matters that Megan’s daughter, Mari, attached herself to Howl’s leg and insisted she could not go to school if he was here, and both Megan and Sophie could tell that Howl was almost swayed by her argument. Megan gave Mari a sharp reproach, Howl a baleful look, and Sophie and Michael a disapproving sort of invitation to tea any time before bundling them all out the door. Howl looked wilted as he led them down a cracked stone walkway. “That’s Megan for you,” he said at last. “At least she hasn’t gotten rid of the car.”

Sophie soon wished Megan had gotten rid of the car. It was, she discovered, a loud, boxy contraption mostly held together by layers of chipping paint. Howl sat in the front, turning a wheel like a little ship’s helm, making the thing careen around corners and leap over hills so wildly she feared the enchantment that powered it was about to collapse altogether.

Michael was braced against the door beside Howl, with the dignified calm of a man at the execution block. “Is it much further?” he asked.

“Shouldn’t be,” said Howl, twisting the wheel in his hands. He had neglected to mention what  _ it _ was. They swerved a corner and Sophie tumbled across the back seat, catching herself with one flung-out hand before she hit the window. Another car came flying out of nowhere, forcing Howl to swerve again to keep from smashing into it. Sophie slid back across the back seat and thumped into the door. A piercing mechanical horn split the air. “Oh, stop whining,” Howl said, returning the honk.

When the car finally stopped outside a squat brown building, Michael and Sophie gave twin sighs of relief. Howl seemed to have recovered his good humor; he bounded out of the car, keys jingling, and opened the back door. Sophie staggered out.

He caught her elbow before she fell. “In one piece, I see.”

“Barely,” she muttered.

“And you, Michael? Still alive?”

Michael, failing to figure out the door mechanism on his side, crawled through Howl’s open door. “I think so.”

“Good! The ride home should be easier; I’ve remembered how to use the clutch. Welcome, friends, to the public library.” He closed the car doors and strode toward the building with the air of someone who forgot their sleeves didn’t trail. Exchanging a glance, Michael and Sophie followed.

Michael gave a little gasp as they entered. It was shabbily decorated, with a low ceiling and none of the paintings or stained glass windows Sophie imagined libraries had. But the  _ books. _ There had to be hundreds, if not thousands, in rows upon rows of shelves. Howl set off purposefully, followed by Michael, with Sophie lingering behind, trying to read every nonsensical title. By the time she found a little sofa to sit on she felt quite overwhelmed.

Michael joined her with a stack of books. “Howl said it would take a bit. He has to renew his library card.”

“His what?” Sophie’s eyes caught on the top book of Michael’s stack.  _ Advanced Quilting Patterns. _

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “But I figure if we keep our heads down no one will realize we don’t have any… library cards. Here. Howl said to bring you this, to keep you out of trouble.” He passed her the pattern book.

“He needn’t worry about  _ me _ causing trouble,” she grumped, but she accepted the offered tome. She had already wanted to read it, anyway. The sofa creaked a little as Michael sat beside her and flipped through a book of what appeared to be star charts. A soothing blanket of quiet settled over them. After a while, Michael slipped down against the arm of the sofa and fell asleep. Like her, he hadn’t slept the night before, nor had time to nap this morning. Sophie yawned, and the bright sewing patterns blurred. It couldn’t hurt to close her eyes for a second.

She did not know how much time had passed when she woke up. There was a note tucked into her open book in Howl’s handwriting. The letters were so deformed he might have forgone ink entirely and just strategically smashed insects onto the paper. She shook Michael awake. “Can you read this?”

He rubbed his eyes and squinted at it.  _ “I want to— _ no,  _ went to— _ uhh, I don’t know the next few words— _ fool? Bark  _ something something  _ hv. _ Hold on, I’ll work a divining spell to see what it means.” Patting down the pockets of his strange stiff pants, he cried out. “My supplies are gone!”

“They must have disappeared when Howl transformed your clothes,” Sophie said. “What do you need?”

“Pure salt and a silver ring,” Michael said.

“Never mind that. Let’s just find Howl himself.” They spread out, staying low to avoid the librarian’s attention as they explored. If even the renowned Wizard Howl needed a special card to be allowed in, their paltry disguises were unlikely to save them if they got caught. But their search proved fruitless; he was nowhere to be found.

“What if he went back to Ingary without us?” Michael said nervously as they crept toward the exit.

“He’d better not have.” Sophie glowered down at the note. “Don’t worry about it. Even if he left, he can’t have gotten too far.”

That concern was blasted from her mind when a loud alarm went off. She froze in the doorway of the library, clutching  _ Advanced Quilting Patterns. _ They had been discovered.

“Uh oh! Could you come back to the check-out desk?” called the librarian. Michael and Sophie exchanged a wide-eyed stare.

“Run,” Sophie said, and they ran out onto the black-paved clearing where Howl had left the car. The car was gone.

“He did go back without us!” Michael said.

“Come back in, please!” called the librarian.

Sophie didn’t have time to think. “Move, move,” she said, shuffling Michael off the pavement into the grass, scurrying behind a hedge of dew-wet bushes. Maybe if they made it back to Megan’s house, Michael could magic them to Ingary once more.

“The alarm stopped,” Michael said as Sophie dragged him around the corner. “Do you think they’re chasing us?”

“I don’t know. Keep moving. I refuse to be arrested on my first visit to—to wherever this is.”

“They’re going to arrest us?” Michael said, his voice shooting up.

“Not if they don’t catch us,” Sophie said, stumping as fast as she could across the wide road. A monstrously tall car swerved around them with a deafening horn blast. Michael screamed. “Calm down!” Sophie ordered, her heart thudding in her chest. Sophie snuck a glance over her shoulder as they reached the other side of the road. The library was out of sight.

“Where are we going?” Michael asked.

“Back to Howl’s sister’s house,” Sophie said. Her breathing was slowly returning to normal as it became clear they had shaken any pursuers. They walked down the strip of grass beside the road. After five minutes, a light mist began to fall. After ten, it turned to a soft rain.

“Do you remember how far her house was?” Michael asked.

“It only took fifteen minutes in that horrible car,” Sophie said dubiously. “It couldn’t be that far walking.”

Michael pulled off his puffy jacket and held it over their heads like an umbrella. Sophie wrapped  _ Advanced Quilting Patterns  _ in her sweater. The grass beneath their feet was turning muddy. A few cars roared past them, throwing up gravel and sludge.

“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Michael asked, after another ten minutes.

“Yes,” Sophie lied.

Another car came tearing up the road and Sophie lifted her arm to shield her face from flying mud. But the car screeched to a halt beside them and the door flew open. “Do you want a ride, or are you starting a new life as fugitives?”

“Oh, there you are,” Sophie groused, stumping toward the car.

“Here  _ I  _ am? Let’s let Sophie sit in the front, I don’t want her sick all over my back seat,” Howl said. “I thought I was safe leaving you two asleep for twenty minutes, but apparently I was mistaken. It’s pure luck the petrol pump man saw you fleeing south!”

“We thought you’d gone back to Ingary without us,” Michael said.

“Did either of you see my note?” he said incredulously.

“We  _ saw _ it, but we couldn’t read it,” Sophie said, extracting  _ Advanced Quilting Patterns _ from her sweater and opening it to reveal the illegible message.

“You stole a library book. Excellent,” he said. Taking one hand from the wheel, he pointed to the note. The car wove across the road. “I went—to grab—some food. Be back in half an hour.”

Sophie huffed, too wet and tired to forgive him yet. “Young man, your handwriting is atrocious.”

“My good Sophie, I am trying with all my might to understand why you woke up in a safe, peaceful library with an explanatory note in your lap and decided the best course of action was to steal a book and run for thirty minutes, in the rain, away from Megan’s house and the library both, but I must admit I’m coming up empty!”

“I’m sure that’s a familiar feeling,” Sophie said.

Howl stared very determinedly through the rain-splattered window in front of him, as though he was either bottling tremendous rage or trying not to laugh. When he had regained control, he said, “There’s a bag of food on the floor by you, Michael. If either of you are hungry.”

A crumpling sound was followed by a warm, starchy smell. Sophie forgot to be angry as Michael passed her hot potato chips wrapped in greasy paper. She took a bite and realized she was starving. In all the excitement, she had not eaten any of the breakfast she had prepared that morning; other than an apple, she had not eaten since supper the night before.

“No need to thank me,” Howl said, after several minutes of silent eating.

Sophie had not intended to. But she asked, as a small concession, “Did you find the book you were looking for?”

“I did,” he said, and didn’t elaborate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "let that suffice, most forcible Feeble" -Falstaff (King Henry IV)
> 
> you may have noticed that the timeline is starting to differ from canon! originally, howl goes to see the king in the morning and it isn't until the afternoon of the next day that michael asks him about the spell and they go to wales. however, the situation seems a little more urgent when michael's holding a fire demon.


	3. In which apologies and disguises are made

The rest of the day was quiet. They made it to the castle without further incident, whereupon Howl and Michael went to their rooms and Sophie sat by Calcifer, telling him what they had seen and flipping through her new book. She had never made a quilt before, but it could not be too hard.

“And Howl found the full poem?” Calcifer asked.

“Yes, but I don’t know what it says.”

“Sneak into his room and take the book,” Calcifer suggested.

Sophie snorted. “He’s probably reading it right now.”

“I bet he’s not. I bet he’s sleeping. C’mon, he won’t notice. I want to hear it!”

“I don’t feel like climbing the stairs,” Sophie said. “I’ll find it for you later. What do you think of this pattern?” she said, turning the book so Calcifer could see the pattern for a patchwork daffodil.

“Hmm,” Calcifer said. “Where are you going to find the yellow fabric?”

“Maybe I’ll get some next time I’m in town,” she said.

It was a particularly golden evening in Porthaven, and the sunset light slanted in through the window overlooking the harbor. Michael popped down occasionally, rummaging through the cabinet for spell ingredients and sometimes coming over to inspect Calcifer’s seat in the hearth.

“What do you think of Lucine?” Sophie asked Calcifer, as she sliced carrots for supper. The cutting board in her lap was angled so the carrot coins rolled into a pan at her feet.

Calcifer’s fiery green eyebrows drew in. “We haven’t talked much. Rather quiet type.”

“Do you trust him?”

“I think I might be the wrong person for you to ask,” Calcifer said. Then he twisted up, winking a purple eye at Sophie, and she turned to see what had gotten his attention. Howl had come downstairs.

“Going out?” Calcifer asked.

“Not for too long,” Howl said distractedly. “Where’s the skull? Ah, here we are.”

“Where are you going?” Sophie asked.

Howl pretended not to hear. “Do make sure Michael eats something,” he called as he left. Using the knife to push the last carrot coins off the cutting board, Sophie creaked upright.

“I suppose this is my chance to find that poem,” she said. Calcifer stirred excitedly as she trudged upstairs. At Howl’s door, however, her courage failed. She had already pushed her luck quite a bit today. Insisting on accompanying him through the black-down door was one thing; snooping around his room, after he had expressly told her not to, was something else. What if he found out and threw another green-slime tantrum? She went back downstairs. “I didn’t see it,” she told Calcifer.

He sank into the ashes, disappointed. “He might’ve taken it with him. I wonder where he went.”

Two uneventful days passed. A royal messenger came looking for Howl, but he was out. Michael hardly came downstairs. Sophie dealt with their customers and felt exploited. She brought Michael a plate of food and saw that his room had been transformed. The window was blocked with heavy cloth; constellations had been chalked across the dark wood of the ceiling, and circular designs had been chalked on the floor. His bed was pushed into the corner to make space for some sort of brazier in which Lucine nestled.

“We only have one fireplace, and Calcifer didn’t seem eager to share when I asked,” he said, wiping his forehead. “Could you pass me the pliers?”

Sophie handed him the pliers. “You certainly look busy.”

“This is only half of it,” he said. “Look what I’ve got in the bucket!” Inside one of his spell circles was a bucket of soil, ringed with spilled dirt and water stains, and in the bucket waved a long green stalk curving with the weight of a fat bud.

“What is it?” she asked, stepping over a pile of torn-up paper to inspect the bud.

“A mandrake,” he said, pleased. “I know Howl thinks I’m not ready for the rest of the spell, but I  _ am, _ and I can show him by finishing it by myself.”

_ He still doesn’t know it’s just a poem, _ Sophie thought. Still, gardening seemed like a harmless enough diversion. “That’s very nice. Make sure to come down to eat sometimes, I don’t like bringing up plates.”

He blinked at her. “Oh! Sorry. I guess I’ve been losing track of time.”

She hmmphed. Some fresh air would probably do him good. “I’m going to market this afternoon. Do you want to come with me?”

“Don’t leave me alone with Calcifer,” Lucine whined.

Michael waved his pliers. “No thank you, Sophie.”

“I’m going to Market Chipping,” she tried, then added slyly, “We could visit Cesari’s.”

Rubbing his head mournfully, Michael said, “The spell I’m working on right now is time-sensitive, sorry. But bring me a cream cake if you go. We’ve got plenty of money under the loose brick.”

“I know, I’ve been the only one putting any there lately,” she muttered, going downstairs.

Michael forgot to come down at lunchtime, but remembered supper. He chattered the whole time about his quest to build a brazier that could sustain Lucine. Without the castle to move, he needed far less fuel than Calcifer, so Michael had been feeding him old papers, and studying the effect of different kinds of paper.

“As in, what the paper is made of?” Sophie asked.

“As in what the paper means,” Michael said excitedly. “Magic is very scientific, but it also has so much to do with emotion. The more significance a paper has to you, the more fuel it provides. I’m going to try giving him non-paper items, like a log versus a carved wooden toy, to see if the difference holds true there.” He scarfed down the last bites of his cheese pie and excused himself.

“I didn’t quite understand that,” Sophie told Calcifer, scraping her plate into the flames.

“All I heard was he’s going to start feeding Lucine valuables to see if they burn longer,” the fire demon crackled. “Better hide your walking stick.”

Michael’s experiments must have gone well, because the next morning the air in the castle fizzed with magic. Sophie stood by Michael’s door and imagined she understood what a compass needle felt like.

“Lucine must be very powerful,” Sophie commented, taking shelter near Calcifer. At least the buzz that filled the air near him was familiar. She had found a yellow tablecloth in one of the cupboards and begun cutting out pieces for her daffodil quilt. Her pins kept sticking like magnets to the scissors.

“He’s not the only one,” Calcifer scoffed. “This is what comes of having two fire demons in such close proximity. It’s like living in a tuning fork, and Michael and Lucine keep smacking it against the table.”

Howl turned up as Sophie and Michael were eating lunch, looking morose. He accepted a bowl of soup without a word. As he sat, they heard a loud knock at the door.

“Kingsbury door,” said Calcifer. “Another royal messenger, by the look of her.”

Howl groaned. “I was supposed to meet with the King a few days ago, but I forgot, with all that business in Wales. Nobody answer the door.”

Sophie was scandalized. “You can’t just ignore her and hope she’ll give up.”

“Why not? He does it all the time with old sweethearts,” Calcifer crackled. “Not that it works very well.”

Rather than defend himself, Howl only grew more morose. “That’s right, mock me. I’m used to it. Fate herself has turned against me. Alright, I’ll tell you what I’ve discovered, though no one saw it fit to ask. The bad news is that the Witch of the Waste has cursed me, and I fear I won’t be able to wriggle out of this one.”

Michael dropped his spoon into his soup. “What?”

“And what’s the good news?” Sophie asked.

“There is no good news. The Witch cursed me, Lettie spurns me, and it’s been days since I felt a woman’s tender touch. It’s a cruel world, dear Sophie, and especially cruel to sensitive souls like me,” he sighed, and spooned soup into his mouth.

Sophie chose determinedly only to focus on the relevant bit. “The Witch cursed you? How?”

“The poem,” he said. Before he could elaborate, there was another loud rap at the door.

“Shouldn’t you explain to the royal messenger why you couldn’t meet the King?” Michael asked nervously.

“No,” Howl said, and pulled a slim volume of poetry from his robes. “I’ve been to see my old teacher, Mrs. Pentstemmon, and she agreed that the Witch must have been involved in swapping the poem with Michael’s spell. It’s very neatly woven. Michael, do you remember learning about different kinds of curses?” Sophie didn’t think this was quite the time for a magical theory lesson, but Michael nodded.

“I think so,” he said. “Malignant spells, simile curses, poem curses, and—oh, I forget the last kind.”

“Spite curses!” Calcifer said helpfully. “Just a nice directionless deluge of magical ill will.”

“Thanks, Calcifer.”

Howl nodded. “Poetry curses are the nastiest, because they’re so complex. When the caster is as powerful as the Witch of the Waste, it becomes virtually impossible to dismantle. Every time one of the lines comes true, the caster gets closer to pinning down the target, like a net tightening.” He illustrated his words by clapping together cupped hands, like he was catching a firefly. Sophie thought of the mandrake bud in Michael’s room.  _ Oh no. _

“I don’t understand,” Michael said. “What poem are you talking about? Is that what you were getting from your sister’s house?”

The necessity of explaining himself derailed Howl’s theatrics. “Ah. Right.” The conflict between the urge to slither out and the realization that  _ someone  _ had to explain to Michael played across his features. Entertaining as it was to watch, Sophie lost patience quickly.

“It turns out that spell we were working on wasn’t really a spell,” she said. “The real spell got swapped with a poem from Howl’s sister’s world—which apparently the Witch used to curse Howl. That’s why we had so much trouble figuring it out.”

Michael frowned. “But we  _ did _ figure it out. We caught Lucine, and I—” his eyes went wide, and he put his hands over his mouth. He had remembered the mandrake. “Sophie!”

“Never mind what’s already happened,” Sophie said quickly. As long as Howl didn’t know about the mandrake, it couldn’t count. “Howl, you’d better stop dithering and read us the curse.”

Clearing his throat, he did so. Then the house was very quiet.

Michael fiddled with his napkin. “Why didn’t you tell me that it wasn’t a real spell?”

“It was supposed to be,” Howl explained. “I meant to give you an enlarging spell. I’ve got it upstairs if you want to work on it later.”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” Michael said, frowning. “When you realized the spell had been swapped, why didn’t you say so? I’ve been puzzling over it for the better part of a week, and no one said anything. Not you, Sophie, or you, Calcifer. Why did everyone know except me?”

Howl shifted uncomfortably. “I did tell you not to work on it.”

“You said it might be better to put that one to rest for now. That’s not the same as telling me it wasn’t actually a spell—much less a curse.” Sophie was rather taken aback by the edge of anger in Michael’s voice. Michael seemed to be too, eyes darting from his fidgeting fingers to Howl, but he pressed forward. “I was so excited when I realized I was supposed to get my own fire demon. It felt like such serious magic. And Lucine is so powerful, and clever! But you didn’t mean for me to catch him at all, and it turns out I’ve been doing everything wrong.” He dropped his wrinkled napkin and pushed in his seat with a scraping sound. “I don’t want to do your stupid enlarging spell.” Howl watched him go with stunned, glass-green eyes.

There was a crack and a snapping of logs shifting in the fireplace. “That went badly,” Calcifer said.

“He has a point,” said Sophie, and began clearing the table.

Howl didn’t move as she reached past him. “I don’t understand,” he said blankly, “If anyone should be upset, it’s me. I  _ did _ just get cursed.”

Sophie put down her stack of bowls, hard. “I honestly can’t believe Michael’s put up with you as long as he has! You’re insufferable!”

His eyes flashed. “You’re one to talk.”

“Do you need to do this right now?” complained Calcifer.

Howl stood in a huff of wounded dignity. “I’ll go, then.”

“Oh, no you don’t!” Sophie said, moving to block him from the door. He looked outraged, vanishing in a twinkle and falling back into existence on the other side of her. She seized him by his embroidered blue coattails. “You’re going to apologize to Michael.”

“For what?” he asked petulantly. “Keeping my own business my own?”

“For hurting his feelings,” Sophie said. “Come on. Bathroom.”

She pulled him by his coattails to the bathroom and closed the door. Noon light glinted off the array of glass bottles on the shelf. It was terribly difficult to have private conversations in a castle this small. Michael may have closed himself in his room, but she had broken up enough arguments between Lettie and Martha to be sure he was listening at the keyhole, trying to hear if they were discussing him, or if they felt sorry. Which she did, but Howl should feel sorrier. The wizard in question perched on the toilet, elbows on his knees, thinking hard. “I told you we should have explained it to him right away.”

Howl didn’t appear to be listening. “Michael’s never been mad at me before.”

She snorted. Still stuck on that. “I can guarantee that’s not true,” she said.

“I should leave for a few days so he can cool off,” Howl said.

“What? That’s an awful idea!” she said.

Howl snapped his fingers. “I should let him pick out some new disguise cloaks! I let him choose the horse one when he first got here, he liked that.”

Sophie goggled at him, momentarily beyond words. Finally, she managed, “He doesn’t want a  _ horse costume, _ he wants you to trust him.” He looked at her, and she could almost see the wheels start to turn behind his glassy eyes. “You’ve hidden information from him, you’ve avoided him, and now you’ve put him in terrible danger! He has a right to be upset. You keep leaving him to bear the brunt of your messes, and if you run away now, you’ll be doing exactly that. It’s disgraceful, and Michael deserves better.”

Her words finally got through to him. His eyes fluttered wider, and then he slumped sideways against the wall, fair hair shining against the mold-speckled wallpaper. “I’ve ruined everything.”

Impatiently, she said, “You haven’t  _ ruined _ anything—”

“I didn’t mean to hurt him. I never do!” he said pathetically. “I didn’t want to become like this. Perhaps I’m destined to be alone,” he quavered, shoulders hunching as he buried his face in his hands.

Sophie folded her arms. “So you finally realized that you hurt Michael’s feelings. How does that make you feel?”

“Bad,” Howl said, voice muffled.

“And how do you think Michael feels right now?”

Sounding even more distressed, he said, “Bad.”

“So what do you think you should do?”

He lifted his head, indignant. “How can you bother me for details right now? I’m suffering!”

She seized him by the shoulders. “Get a hold of yourself!” She summoned her most imposing old woman voice. “I have lived many, many years, young man, so listen to what I have to say: stop tying yourself in knots over this and fix it. You may have a few hours to collect yourself and then at supper you  _ will _ apologize to Michael.” Seeing him recoil, she added sternly, “It won’t kill you, and if it does, you’ll die in the knowledge that you were trying to do the right thing for once.”

“Wait until supper, and then apologize in person?” he repeated.

“Yes.”

He considered. “It could work.”

“No weaseling out this time,” she warned, releasing him.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, accompanying the obvious lie with a conciliatory smile as he rose from the toilet. He took her wrinkled hands. “You’ve convinced me. Fear not, Mrs. Nose. Though it kills me, I’ll set things right.” And with that gallant pronouncement, he ushered her out of the bathroom and dressed to go out. “I’ve just got to collect some things,” he called to Sophie, tying a sash around his waist as he opened the door to Kingsbury. “I’ll be back by supper! I promise.” And with another brilliant smile, he disappeared.

Utterly bemused, Sophie trudged upstairs. Calcifer stretched in the fireplace to see her. “What on earth went on in there? What did he promise?”

Sophie just waved her hand. If Howl didn’t appear to apologize that evening she would go rearrange everything in the backyard. But for some reason, she rather expected him to return on his own. The fizz of Lucine’s magic was barely noticeable as she reached Michael’s door. She knocked.

“Who is it?” he called.

“It’s Sophie.”

“Don’t come in. I’m having a tantrum,” he said glumly.

“I think tantrums usually have audiences,” she pointed out.

“Oh.” There was a shifting of something heavy and the door swung open. “Come in, then, I guess.” Michael was lying in the middle of the floor; she could only imagine that he had used magic to shift the book-piled chair that had blocked the door. He laced his fingers over his stomach, staring at the chalk constellations on the ceiling.

“You don’t have much experience throwing tantrums, do you?” Sophie asked, clearing the chair so she could sit. Lucine curled lazily in his brazier. The weak light that he cast over the floor revealed no sign of broken dishes (a signature of Lettie’s tantrums) or furious letters (a signature of Martha’s) or green slime (Howl’s, of course).

“No,” he admitted. “But I’m still angry.”

“I understand,” she said.

“I don’t like being angry, though,” he sighed. Then he asked, hopefully, “Did Howl send you to apologize for him?”

“That would be just like him, wouldn’t it?” Sophie snorted. “No, I came to see how you were, and to apologize myself. Howl told me about the spell swap, and I should have told you. I don’t know much about magic. I thought he knew best—a mistake I will  _ not _ be making again.” At the emphatic shake of her head, Michael chuckled reluctantly. “But I expect Howl will apologize himself soon, when he’s good and ready. And when he’s gotten over his dreadful cowardice.”

Michael frowned at the ceiling. “I’m sure he’s not scared of apologizing to me.”

“I think he’s scared of just about everything,” Sophie said. “Scared of responsibility, scared of that curse, scared of arguing. Surely you’ve noticed how he loves to slither out of any conflict whatsoever.”

“You make him sound so terrible!” said Michael, and then remembered he was supposed to be angry with Howl.

Sophie leaned forward confidingly. “That’s why he didn’t tell you about the spell sooner. Too scared to own up to his mistake.”

“Did Calcifer tell you that?”

“I can see it. I’m a very good judge of people,” she said. “I’ve known a terrible lot of them. You know, since I’m so old.” He nodded, sitting up and smudging the chalk circle beneath him. Once she became young again she would miss being able to claim all this unearned life experience. Michael crumpled an ink-covered paper and tossed it into Lucine’s brazier.

“At least Lucine and I got each other out of all this,” he said.

Sophie’s lips pruned into a grimace. “About that—” Michael and Lucine turned to look at her as one. She fumbled for words. “I know you can’t tell me what happened between you, but—just, be careful. You’ve been doing so much new magic, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

The whistle of Lucine’s voice surprised Sophie. “I won’t let him get hurt.”

Michael rubbed his collarbone. “Don’t worry about us. We’re doing fine.” Then he looked mournfully at the mandrake blooming in the corner. “I suppose we’d better get rid of that before Howl gets back.”

“Burn it?” Sophie suggested.

He brightened. “Good idea!”

“Brush off the mud first,” said Lucine, as Michael pulled up the mandrake. With a shake, he sent a spray of dirt across the floor, and brushed the rest free from its spindly roots, then squinted at it.

“Actually, it’s toxic, so we might not want to burn it.”

“I’ll get some For Decay to break it down, then,” Sophie said. It would be rather unfortunate, she thought as she went to the bathroom to fetch the powder, to accidentally poison herself and Michael with mandrake smoke.

Howl had bought more disguises. He came in with an armful of cloaks that evening and pretended not to see Michael until he nearly bumped into him. “Oh, hello, Michael!”

“Hello, Howl,” Michael said, a bit awkwardly.

“What’s all this?” Sophie asked. 

Howl lay the cloaks out lumpy over the piles of things on the workbench. There were four—a deep red, a dark purple, a forest green and an indigo blue. He moved back to let Michael and Sophie cluster around them, and Sophie put out an awed hand to brush the rich, velvety fabrics. “The royal messenger left a notice on the door and I am now officially a wanted man for evasion of royal duties, so I thought we’d better put a few precautions in place.”

Sophie was not so distracted by the beauty of the fabrics as to let that slip past without elaboration. “You’re a wanted man for  _ what?” _

“The King is trying to name me Royal Wizard. He thinks I should go looking for his brother, Prince Justin. I think I shouldn’t. Luckily, without a Royal Wizard, his chances of finding the castle are small once I’ve rigged up a concealment spell over the Kingsbury door,” he said. Then he added, casually, as if it had just occurred to him, “Actually, maybe you would want to work on the concealment spell with me, Michael?”

“These must have cost a fortune,” Michael said, looking disapprovingly at the cloaks.

“Well, we’ve done well recently, what with the army’s transport spells. And if all three of us are going to need disguises around Kingsbury, the two cloaks we have wouldn’t do.”

“The King’s not going to be paying for any more transport spells now, though,” Michael fretted. Howl’s smile was weakening.

_ Is this his attempt at reconciliation? _ Sophie thought. If it was, it was going quite poorly; Michael didn’t seem to have noticed. She caught Howl’s gaze and ticked her head sideways at Michael.  _ I’m sorry,  _ she mouthed.

He waved a hand, disheartened.  _ It’s alright. _

That was  _ not  _ what she’d meant.  _ Tell him— _ and she pointed discreetly at Michael as he lifted the deep red cloak— _ that you’re sorry. _

“We’ll make do somehow,” Howl said. “Er, Michael, I don’t believe I’ve said—I was thinking about the spell swapping, and you seemed rather upset that I hadn’t told you about it sooner, and I wanted to tell you that it wasn’t my intention—”

_ I’m sorry! _ Sophie mouthed furiously.

He swallowed. “And I’m sorry.”

Sophie leaned heavily against the bookshelf. Michael looked rather touched.

“It’s alright, I suppose,” he said. “I’m sorry you got cursed.”

“As am I,” said Howl, looking relieved. “Well! We can enchant the cloaks and cast the concealment spell after supper?”

“Alright,” said Michael and gave a reassuring nod.

Sensing that they might stand there for another ten minutes, Sophie scooped up the cloaks (they  _ were _ wonderfully made) and pushed them into Michael’s arms. “Could you hang these in the closet? And then let’s all get washed up for supper.” Michael took the cloaks, and Sophie set the table. Howl stood another moment in the middle of the room, hands on his hips, and as she dug through the mismatched cutlery in the silver drawer, she heard him say to Calcifer, “I think that went rather well!”

Sophie was surprised to find that two of the cloaks were for her. “Howl and I each have one already,” Michael said. “He’s had the one that turns you into a red-bearded man for ages, and he made the one that turns you into a horse back when I became his apprentice.”

Howl sat on the floor, back to the hearth, pouring colored powders into a series of wooden bowls. “Are there any disguises you would prefer, Sophie?” he asked.

The thought crossed her mind, briefly, of asking for a cloak that made her look like a young, red-haired woman. It would be like being uncursed—almost. Except she would still have stiff joints and slow feet and a cracking voice, beneath the cloak. Howl waited for her answer. “A cat,” she said finally. “A big black one.”

He smiled. Michael had brought Lucine downstairs as they worked, and the magic interference between the two fire demons made all the dishes and jars jitter. Sophie had twisted back her hair to keep it from puffing out. Howl had not, and now his long hair drifted around him like he was underwater.

By the end of the evening, they had six enchanted cloaks hanging in the broom closet, that could make you look like a cat or a horse or a red-bearded man or a beggar woman or a little brown-haired boy or an intimidating craggy-featured figure, as long as you didn’t stick your arm out or talk too much. There was something cosy about the sight of so many cloaks in the closet, Sophie thought, after the others had gone to bed. She combed her hair and hobbled to her alcove.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter 3: in which allusions to the later books & movie are hidden--bonus points if you saw them :)  
> thank you to people who've left comments, they make me so, so happy to read!! and a very happy st valentine's day to you all!


	4. In which an unexpected exit occurs

It wasn’t the King that found the castle. A week later, as Sophie was trying to put a pan of bacon on the fire and Calcifer was complaining that it was Lucine’s turn to be cooked over, Howl’s voice rang out hoarsely from nowhere. “Brace yourself, Calcifer! She’s found us!”

Calcifer sprang upright. The frying pan fell across Sophie’s knees. “You’ll have to wait!” Calcifer roared, flaming blindingly up the chimney. Almost at once he blurred into a dozen or so burning blue faces, as if he was being shaken violently about, and burned with a loud throaty whirring. Michael’s door banged open.

“Howl’s fighting the Witch!” he said, tripping down the stairs as he pulled on his jacket.

Sophie picked slices of bacon off her skirt with slightly burned fingers. Calcifer was a sight to see, blurring from cobalt blue to almost white, seething and pulsing. Something swept overhead with a blast and a boom which shook everything in the room. A second something followed, with a long, shrill roar. Calcifer pulsed nearly blue-black, and Sophie’s skin fizzed with the backblast from the magic. Michael ran to the window, peering out over the harbor.

“They must be over Porthaven,” he said breathlessly. The guitar twanged wildly beside him. Setting down the pan of bacon, Sophie made her way to the window. Everything in the castle seemed to be shaking itself loose. The skull was yattering its jaw so hard it fell off the shelf; Sophie caught it, but not a book that dropped heavily to the ground and lay open on the floor, fanning its pages back and forth.

“This is my big test,” Michael muttered. “I’ve got to go. Don’t get too close, Sophie!” He spun the disk by the door so the blue blob pointed down.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To help Howl!” The door slammed shut behind him. A moment later, she felt the air grow charged as Lucine’s magic crossed with Calcifer’s. A large jar fell from the shelf and smashed on the ground, sending mustard seeds skittering into the cracks between the floorboards. Scented steam boiled out of the bathroom.

“Oh, bother!” Sophie said. She couldn’t stay here. The fight must be quite close—people were flocking to the streets. Dropping the skull in the sink as she passed, Sophie hurried to the broom closet and threw on the first cloak she found—the one that made her a red-bearded man. Calcifer wavered like the thrumming strings of Howl’s guitar as Sophie rushed out. Any worries about not being able to find the wizards disappeared when she followed the crowd’s gaze to see a huge cloud boiling and twisting just above the chimney tops.

It was a spectacular sight, stormy clots of magic roiling and tearing apart as Howl and the Witch fought. Sophie followed the bravest watchers all the way to the harbor and hung by the shelter of the harbor master’s hut. Howl and the Witch seemed almost evenly matched, raging back and forth as they conjured up ships and flames and vast water spouts. But where was Michael?

And then a flash of light seared out from the mast of one of the moored ships, nearly hitting the Witch, and Sophie saw that Michael had climbed into the crow’s nest. The Witch turned to see the new challenger and a blast from Howl scythed through the Witch’s cloud. As she fell she changed forms, becoming a massive, scaly sea serpent before dropping into the harbor with a _fwoom!_

“Did they kill her?” someone said hopefully from behind Sophie.

Before anyone could answer, the Witch-serpent burst out of the sea, sending a surge of water over the harbor wall as she coiled around the ship Michael was on. He waved his arms. Thunder rolled; lightning hit the serpent. She roared, tightening her coils until the railings began to crack, and smoke streamed up the mast, snaking toward the crow’s nest. Frantically, Michael called more lightning to scorch away the slithering tendrils, but in an instant they were upon him.

“Stay away from him!” Sophie shouted. Most of the crowd had scrambled back as the fight came up to the harbor wall, but she huddled against the corner of the harbor master’s hut, trying to see through rising curtains of smoke and steam. Lightning flashed once more. The following crack of thunder almost deafened her. Her knees felt about to give out.

Howl swooped after the blast, arrow-fast. The trailing sleeves of his suit had become massive wings, black as a crow’s, and his feet were clawed talons. He disappeared into the smoke and emerged with Michael hanging from his claws. Sophie was so relieved that she almost did not notice the green-haired women dragging themselves, wailing, up the harbor wall. “Mermaids,” she said. Then, “The curse!”

Howl dropped Michael onto the roof of the harbor master’s hut and whirled back out to sea. “Michael!” Sophie shouted, waving wildly.

He peered over the edge. “Sophie!” He was covered in soot and had a glittering blue streak of something down his shirt, but looked unharmed. “We’ve almost got her!” Then, brow furrowing in concentration, he leapt off the roof, and the sea swelled up to meet him. The Witch was human again (or as human as ever), rising on a burning cloud of magic, but Howl and Michael caught her like a hammer and anvil. Glowing like molten iron, she repelled one attack—a second attack—and the third caught her head-on. With an ear-piercing shriek, she flew apart, bursting like a firework. Something like embers flew across the harbor and boiled the water where they landed. One hit the harbor master’s hut, catching fire to the wood, and Sophie hurried to put it out.

Howl and Michael floated down beside her. Smoke drifted across the docks. Sophie slapped at the smouldering wall of the hut with her drenched apron. As Howl’s talons touched the ground, they became human feet once more, and the dark feathers melted into his sleeves. He stumbled a little as he landed.

In contrast, Michael seemed to burst with energy. A light flickered in his eyes. “Did you see that, Sophie? We did it!”

“It was hard to miss,” she said. Howl lay down on the harbor wall, a tragic puddle of blue and silver fabric. “I don’t think the Witch knew what hit her, when you attacked from the ship.”

Michael grinned. “She really didn’t! I thought I would be terrified the whole time, but it was actually kind of exciting. I _was_ a little scared when she sent all those smoke snakes up the mast—but then Howl swooped in as a giant bird! Did you see that?”

His smile was infectious. “I did, he brought you over here, remember?”

“Right, right,” Michael said. He hopped from one foot to the other with youthful energy that she envied. The burnt smell was making her head hurt. Michael must have thought the same; with a wave of his hand, he raised a breeze, blowing away the last remnants of the Witch’s magic. Howl’s eyes opened.

“What are you doing, Michael?”

“Raising a wind?” Michael said, dropping his hand.

Howl threw an arm over his face and mumbled something indistinguishable. Sophie poked him with her foot.

“Speak up, young man.”

 _“And find what wind serves to advance an honest mind.”_ It was part of the poem curse, although she did not see what it mattered now. “It doesn’t add up. This curse isn’t behaving like it’s supposed to. I should have felt it take. And I should have felt it break just now when the Witch died.”

“Maybe you weren’t paying attention,” Sophie suggested. “You said this was a very subtle curse. Or maybe it was fulfilled already. The Witch _did_ find you.”

Howl shook his dripping head. _“Go and catch a falling star, get with child a mandrake root,”_ he quoted. “There was no mandrake root.”

Sophie saw no reason to keep the secret any longer, and said, “There was, Michael grew one. Back when he thought it was part of the spell.”

“And neither of you told me?”

“We thought it wouldn’t count if you didn’t know!” Sophie said.

He threw his hands up. “It shouldn’t have!”

“Then I don’t see what the problem is! Let’s go back to the castle,” Sophie said. Calcifer would want to hear the news, Howl should probably lay somewhere beside the sea-wet stone of the harbor wall, and she needed to sit down.

“It’s not right,” Howl muttered, sitting up to reveal a Howl-shaped patch of dampness beneath him. “The mermaids didn’t sing.”

“But they did,” Michael said. “Didn’t you hear it? This screechy sort of thing as they were pulling each other out of the water.” He had a funny expression now. “Howl, what did you mean when you said you should have felt the curse take?”

“When a curse takes hold you _feel_ it. Like a stone settling in your stomach.”

The ocean lapped gently against the wall. “Michael?” said Sophie. He looked at his feet.

“I think I felt that,” he said softly. “The night I caught Lucine.”

Sophie understood first. _“Go and catch a falling star…_ the curse isn’t on Howl. It’s on Michael.”

Howl lay back down, his head hitting the stone with a thump. “No.”

Michael looked seconds away from joining Howl on the ground. He wasn’t much good in a crisis, and this was certainly a crisis. The Witch of the Waste was perfectly justified in chasing after Howl, as far as Sophie was concerned. Not that she wanted him caught by the curse—but after jilting so many women, some fear and peril seemed well-deserved. But Michael had nothing except accidentally get in the way.

“We need to go back and look at the whole poem,” Sophie said. _“Now.”_

She half-dragged them back to the castle. The interior was worse for the wear, with several more jars broken on the floor. One of the guitar’s strings snapped with a melancholy twang as they entered. Calcifer burnt low and blue in the hearth, stretching up at the sight of them.

“It’s about time you got here!” he said.

“Worried, were you?” asked Howl, tracking water across the floor as he found the poetry book under his chair and handed it to Michael. “Hot water, Calcifer. Please.”

“Hot water, Calcifer,” Calcifer repeated testily. “Fight the Witch of the Waste, Calcifer. No need to know what’s going on, Calcifer.” Howl closed himself wearily in the bathroom. Sophie sat Michael in the hearth chair with a firm push and wrapped his hunched shoulders in a towel. His earlier energy was gone. He opened to the poem in question and began carefully copying it over onto a fresh sheet of paper to take notes. In the meantime, Sophie made toast. Michael accepted a slice silently, dropping crumbs on his notes as he worked. Finally, he passed her a sheet of jam-smeared paper.

_Go and catch a falling star,_ -> Lucine, at marshes

 _Get with child a mandrake root,_ -> sprouted mandrake

 _Tell me where all past years are,_ -> unknown

_Or who cleft the devil's foot,_

_Teach me to hear mermaids singing,_ -> shrieking at harbor

 _Or to keep off envy's stinging,_ -> envious of who?

_And find_

_What wind_

_Serves to advance an honest mind._ -> raised wind at harbor, Howl and Sophie explained curse

_If thou be'st born to strange sights,_ -> yes

 _Things invisible to see,_ -> have worked invisibility spells, unseen magic

 _Ride ten thousand days and nights,_ -> unknown

 _Till age snow white hairs on thee,_ -> no white hairs

_Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,_

_All strange wonders that befell thee,_

_And swear,_

_No where_

_Lives a woman true, and fair._ -> lots of women are true and fair?? Howl likes to tell stories about adventures & girls?

_If thou find'st one, let me know,_

_Such a pilgrimage were sweet;_

_Yet do not, I would not go,_

_Though at next door we might meet;_ -> castle doors?

_Though she were true, when you met her,_

_And last, till you write your letter,_ -> letters in Lucine’s brazier

_Yet she_

_Will be_

_False, ere I come, to two, or three._

He rubbed his eyes as Sophie read the notes. There was a good deal scratched out. “Which ones are you sure haven’t happened yet?” she asked.

“There are three,” he said, counting them off on his fingers. “ _Tell me where all past years are_ — _ride ten thousand days and nights_ — _till age snow white hairs on thee.”_

“Only three,” she murmured to herself, then tried to look optimistic. “Well, those all sound like they have to do with old age, don’t they? So you may have a good long time before it comes true. If the curse was meant for Howl, the Witch might have accidentally given you more time.”

Michael pulled the towel tighter around his shoulders. “I need to talk to Lucine.”

“Why don’t you bring him down here, then?” Sophie said quickly. She didn’t like the idea of Michael taking counsel alone with the fire demon. His room was too dark and removed to process frightening news. He might do something rash. “And we can get him and Calcifer caught up on the fight at the same time.”

“If you want,” Michael said.

As he climbed the stairs, Sophie said, “He’s not taking this well.”

“Actually, he’s taking it very calmly,” Calcifer said.

“That’s what I mean. It’s not like him,” Sophie muttered. She split a slice of toast and gave half to Calcifer, eating the other half as she wiped up the wet footprints they had left all over the floor.

Michael came downstairs, holding Lucine’s brazier, and set it on the table. Calcifer and Lucine leaned away from each other. Michael fed papers into the brazier as he recounted what had happened, from the time he left the castle that morning to the moment he realized the curse had taken hold of him.

Calcifer burned up in the fireplace. “That’s just disgraceful, that’s what I call it—cursing the wrong person.”

“Did you see the Witch’s star?” Lucine asked keenly.

“No, her fire demon is still out there somewhere,” Michael said.

Lucine shrank down, flickering pale. “She’ll be madly hungry now. All the power she spent and no human to feed her. She’s going to come for us.” He shuddered and a wave of static raised Sophie’s hair.

“Tell him to stop that,” Calcifer said irritably.

“She’ll come here soon,” Lucine persisted. “We’re shining like a lantern.”

Calcifer flickered unhappily, but did not contradict the other fire demon. Sophie was suspicious of the understanding look that passed between them. There was something about the way they wove, orange and gold, like they were dancing around each other.

“Can you break the curse before she finds you?” Sophie asked.

Michael shook his head, and Lucine said, “It’s too strong.”

“Could we outlast her, do you think?” Michael asked Lucine. “How long can she make it without—?” He bit his lip and didn’t finish. Lucine considered. Michael crumpled another ink-scrawled paper into the brazier.

“We couldn’t hide here, anyway,” Lucine said eventually.

Michael slumped, nodding. “Too bright.”

Sophie had the strangest feeling that she was only hearing half of their conversation. “What do you mean, too bright?”

“Too many stars,” Lucine said. Before Michael could clarify, the bathroom door opened and Howl emerged.

“What a lot of glum faces,” he said, although he was hardly the image of cheer himself. His face was clean, his hair brushed, and the smell of brine had been replaced with the scent of jasmine, but he still looked tired. “Calcifer, I assume Sophie and Michael have told you our unfortunate discovery. I think we’ll need to move at least some of the castle doors.”

“What’s wrong with where they are now?” Sophie asked, passing him a piece of now-cold toast as he swept into his chair at the table.

“Lucine thinks the magical backblast of both of us being here will draw attention,” Calcifer explained.

“And I’m afraid he’s right,” Howl said. “We’ve probably got a few days to scout out new locations.”

“You know it’ll be dangerous for both of us to move me from Porthaven,” Calcifer said.

Howl tilted his head, earrings glinting. “Less dangerous than waiting here for the Witch’s fire demon. I don’t see what other option we have.”

“I could leave.”

Sophie thought Michael was joking until she saw his expression. His fingers dug into the towel around his shoulders, and he stared into Lucine’s flames as he avoided eye contact with Howl and Sophie. “That’s the only solution that makes sense. She won’t find the castle then.”

Sophie sputtered. _The only solution that makes sense?_ “That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“Michael, you don’t have to,” Howl said. “I can defend the castle. You’ll be safer here than on your own.”

“I can defend myself,” Michael said. “I helped fight the Witch today. I’m not helpless.”

“I’m not saying you’re helpless,” Howl began.

“But you think that,” Michael said. He looked up suddenly, a spark in his eye. “You want me and Lucine here where you can keep an eye on us, even if it’s more dangerous for everyone.”

Howl’s face was pale. “Do you think that?” Michael didn’t respond. Sophie was glad for the lingering dampness of her dress; the air had grown unbearably hot. Two fire demons blazing away in the same little room had turned her skin feverish. Howl’s voice was restrained as he asked Michael, “Where do you want to go?”

Sophie’s mouth dropped open. He couldn’t be serious.

“I would find somewhere,” Michael said. “I’ve survived alone before. And I can take care of myself better than when I got here. I’m older, I know magic—I have Lucine.”

“He could go to Mrs. Pentstemmon’s,” Calcifer suggested. 

“She wouldn’t be happy about taking in Lucine,” Howl murmured. “But I could write her an explanation. Like a letter of recommendation.”

“You aren’t really considering this, are you?” Sophie said. “Michael can’t just move out of the castle!”

“Why not?” Michael said, jutting out his chin. He really intended to go through with this, she realized with a sinking feeling. And she was going to offend him if she wasn’t careful. But she could not let it go.

“Michael, think this through—” she said.

He interrupted before she could finish. “I have. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to pack.”

As he marched upstairs, Sophie rounded on Howl. He turned away. “Sophie, don’t.”

Oh, let him _try_ to slither out of this one. “How could you let him do this?” she demanded. “It’s not safe!”

“I haven’t kept him very safe here, either. He’s right,” Howl said, finding a sheet of paper on the workbench and sitting at the table to write.

“He’s _fifteen,”_ she said.

“And I’m not throwing him out on the street!” Howl said. “But I’m not going to keep him here against his will. He’s old enough and smart enough to make decisions for himself. Now, _please,_ I need to focus on composing this letter.”

“Calcifer, you don’t think this is a good idea, do you?” Sophie said sharply.

“It’s not up to me,” he crackled.

“That doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion on it,” she said. Howl snorted, which Sophie did not appreciate. She was beginning to feel like she had caught a chill down by the harbor, and she was unable to even summon up a good righteous anger to replace the distress eating away at her. After all, she had done this too. The Witch of the Waste cursed her and she left home with a restless certainty that the solution had to be anywhere but where she was. But that was _different,_ she thought crossly, although she couldn’t quite make out how—except that Michael was young, and she didn’t want him to go. She glared at Lucine.

“You did this,” she said. “If Michael gets hurt, I’ll—I’ll dump a bucket of water on you!”

“Sophie, _stop,”_ Howl said. “That won’t help.”

Her hands clenched to fists by her sides. He may be right but she hated him for saying it. She hated not being able to do anything. It seemed like she was the only one who cared what was happening.

But standing there, speechless and useless, would not help anyone. She made her way up the creaking stairs, feeling very old, and knocked on Michael’s door. The sounds of movement stopped.

“Who is it?” Michael asked.

“It’s Sophie,” she said heavily. “I was wondering if you needed help packing.”

A moment later, he opened the door. She shuffled in. He had a bag open in the middle of the floor, already mostly full; she saw his tunics, some socks, and a comb. Silently, she helped fold his extra trousers and passed him his jacket, which he pulled on.

“Is that all?” she asked.

“It’s more than I came here with,” he said. Buckling the bag shut, he looped it over his shoulders, then took a box of papers in his arms. He looked sadly around the room. The chalk on his floor had already started to scuff away, but the drawings up the walls and ceiling were still clear. The mandrake bucket was gone but the dirt remained. Ashes smeared the spell circle where the brazier had been. “I’m sorry to leave this mess. I think it’s safest for me to go right away.”

Without much hope, Sophie asked, “Are you sure you have to leave?”

“It’s for the best,” Michael said.

“You can always come back,” Sophie said as she followed him downstairs. Michael looked wordlessly at Howl, who still wrote intently, then upended the box of papers into the brazier. Lucine leapt up and the papers curled black within his flames.

“That’ll last you for a while, won’t it?” he said quietly.

Howl finished his letter with a flourish and held it out to Michael. “Here. Give this to Mrs. Pentstemmon and she should let you and Lucine stay as long as you need to. You know the way to her house?”

Michael nodded. “Thank you,” he said, tucking the letter into his jacket. “Well—goodbye, then.”

“Do you need help moving anything?” Howl asked. Michael shook his head. Sophie pulled him into a hug, which seemed to startle him, but after a heartbeat he softened.

“Stay safe,” she said gruffly, releasing him. He still smelled briny; he hadn’t even washed up since fighting the Witch of the Waste. She felt another twinge of distress.

But he picked up Lucine’s brazier with a tight smile. “You too,” he said. “Goodbye, Howl. Goodbye, Calcifer.”

“Goodbye, Michael,” Calcifer crackled. Howl opened the door to Kingsbury, and Michael left.


	5. In which Sophie resumes her rampage

With Michael gone, Sophie set to work cleaning his room. There was nothing else she could do, except maybe sit downstairs and watch Howl throwing together some spell in that slapdash way he warned Michael not to imitate, but if she sat in the same room as him for much longer she might burst apart like the Witch.

Michael was gone! The whole place felt strange without him. She would never have guessed, when he fretted over her arrival that first, wind-swept night at the castle, that he would leave before her. With a firm yank, she pulled down the thick cloth that covered the window, and evening light streamed in from Porthaven.

She swept the dust and dirt into a neat pile and then carried her heaping dustpan downstairs to empty through the door onto the moors. Howl was peering into a pie dish filled with a shimmering liquid. Setting her jaw, she tossed her sweepings out the door and carried a bucket of water upstairs.

“What a mess,” she muttered, rolling up her sleeves and dunking a rag into the bucket. She mopped the whole floor, scrubbing chalk and ash and stubborn scorch marks until her fingers were raw and her knees ached from kneeling. But that was only the start. The bedsheets had to be stripped from the worm-eaten mattress, and the window opened to air out the smoky smell that lingered from Lucine’s residence, and then she found the old box Michael kept hidden under his bed.

Sophie was surprised by the sight of it; last she had seen, he hid it in the workbench to protect it from her cleaning rampages. Lifting the lid, she saw it was empty. No spun-sugar rose, no blue ribbon, no stack of letters. Had he taken the contents with him or given them to Lucine?

She sat on the bed for a minute, catching her breath, rubbing her wrinkled fingers over her jumping heart. Even with the Porthaven sunlight streaming in she was a little cold. It hadn’t crossed her mind to change out of her damp dress. A shiver ran over her. She wiped her nose.

The next order of business would be the chalk all over the walls and ceiling. Sophie didn't know how Michael had gotten it so high. More magic, probably. She squinted up at the constellations drawn onto the dark wood of the ceiling.

The stepladder thumped against each stair as Sophie dragged it up, breathing heavily, to Michael’s room. When she had cleaned as high as she could reach, she marched back downstairs.

“Howl,” she said—maybe too sharply. He overturned the pie dish he had been carrying to the sink onto his shirt and then swore.

The shimmery liquid oozed down his shirt and dripped onto the floor. He drew his lips tightly together. “Yes,  _ dear _ Sophie?” he said.

“I need your help cleaning Michael’s ceiling. My arms aren’t long enough to reach,” she said stiffly.

“Then don’t,” he said. “I’m sure it’s fine.”

“It’s  _ not,” _ she said. “It looks a mess.”

He dropped the pie dish in the sink with a clatter. “What does it matter what it looks like? Just leave it!” He wiped his hand through the liquid gelling down his front, examined it, and then turned away to start unbuttoning his shirt.

Sophie swung around, face going hot. “What are you doing?”

“Getting this thing off before the scrying liquid burns through it,” he said. “Can’t a man wear what he wants in his own home? Oh, for crying out loud!” Someone had knocked on the door. Sophie’s heart leapt.

“Porthaven door,” Calcifer said, and her excitement vanished. “I think it’s a customer.”

“I’ll get it,” Sophie said angrily, shielding her eyes as Howl stormed to the bathroom and closed the door. There was a young girl at the door, with two yellow braids and a basket clutched tightly in her hands. At Sophie’s expression she quailed.

“My uncle told me to pick up a spell,” she squeaked.

Sophie squeezed the door knob, trying to school her face into something at the very least  _ neutral. _ “What kind of spell?” she asked.

“To help him find his cow,” the girl said.

Sophie leaned back. “Calcifer, do we have a cow-finding spell made?”

“It’s not done yet,” he called. “Michael was working on it yesterday.”

“It isn’t finished,” Sophie told the little girl. “Tell your uncle to come back tomorrow.”

“Yes, Mrs. Witch,” the girl said, and nodded nervously until Sophie pulled the door shut.

Howl opened the bathroom door, holding his sopping shirt. “Don’t talk to Calcifer while there’s a customer here, they’ll spread rumors.”

“So? If you really care what customers say you’d better finish making that finding spell by tomorrow.” Glancing up, she saw that he was still wringing out his shirt in the bathroom sink. “And can you get dressed?”

With a loud, exasperated huff, he threw a towel around his shoulders and marched upstairs, wet shirt flinging water across the floor she had already mopped up once that day. She wiped her running nose on the hem of her dusty apron, then sneezed.

“Michael made it to Mrs. Pentstemmon’s safely,” Calcifer said from the fireplace.

She sat heavily in the chair before him. “Was Howl snooping on him?”

“Hey, we all wanted to know,” Calcifer said. Sophie put out her stiff fingers to warm them over the fire. “Cold?” he asked.

“I hate being old,” she grumbled. “And I know what you’re going to say, about the contract! Ugh.” She sneezed again.

“Maybe you should sleep,” Calcifer said. “Isn’t that what humans do when they feel bad?”

“I feel  _ fine,” _ Sophie said savagely. There was too much to do, cleaning up after everyone’s messes. There was water flung around the stairs, scrying-whatsit puddling by the sink—and dishes from their hasty lunch on the table, and the bookshelf was all disordered from the fight with the Witch that morning. And the mess in Michael’s room still wasn’t clean.

Sophie woke up the next morning with a pounding headache. She growled as she stumbled out of bed. When she had a pan of eggs and sausage, she shouted up the stairs, “Are you coming down to breakfast or should I feed your half to Calcifer?”

“I feel awful,” Howl called weakly. “Bring it up to me.”

“I’m too tired to climb the stairs,” she shouted. “Come down.”

She could hear his groan clear through his door and down the stairs. “Then don’t bother about me. I’ll just go hungry.”

“Alright!” she said, and stumped back to the hearth to scrape half the eggs and sausage into the fire. Calcifer devoured it eagerly. “What does he feel so awful about, I’d like to know? You did just as much work yesterday in the fight with the Witch, didn’t you?”

“More,  _ I’d _ say,” said Calcifer. Sophie decided that if Howl was going to stay upstairs she might as well clean the bathroom. She propped the door open so she could talk to Calcifer as they worked; between the two of them, they were able to keep up a steady stream of complaints that entirely drowned out the sounds of Howl groaning and rolling around upstairs. Around noon there was a knock at the door.

“Porthaven door,” Calcifer called, loud enough for Howl to hear. “It’s the little girl from yesterday.”

There was a thump and a few bumps and Howl’s door opened. “Sophie, will you tell her it isn’t ready yet?”

Sophie leaned heavily against her broom. “No.”

“Hello?” the girl called.

“I think she can hear you,” Calcifer warned them.

“I’m sorry, the spell isn’t—” Howl yelled, but Sophie shouted louder.

“Go away! Wizard Howl is acting like a  _ child _ and refuses to get out of bed to make your spell!”

Howl appeared at the top of the stairs, glowering. “Good grief, Sophie—”

“The customer’s gone,” Calcifer reported. Howl flung his arm over his eyes.

“—you are going to ruin my business,” he finished.

“You’re ruining your own business by chasing off your apprentice and refusing to do any of his work!” she snapped.

“I didn’t chase Michael away!” Howl said heatedly, descending the stairs. He didn’t look like he had been feeling unwell at all, she thought angrily. Her head throbbed.

“You might as well have,” Sophie said. “You didn’t try to stop him from leaving.”

“Do you think I should have forced him to stay here?” he asked. “Do you think it’s better to keep people against their will, when they aren’t happy?”

“I think he left because he didn’t think anyone really wanted him to stay,” she said. Howl stood with his arms crossed across his chest as she stabbed a finger at him. “Because  _ you _ didn’t tell him. Because either you truly don’t care about anyone, or you’re too much of a coward to tell them so, and I’d believe either one! I’ve never met someone with such a talent for causing trouble and then foisting it on others. Now you’re finally having to deal with your own messes and you’re terrified. And you should be.” 

“Is that all?” he said coldly.

“No,” she said, and began fumbling with the strings of her apron. The clumsiness of her fingers made for an awkward few seconds until she was able to loosen the knots and throw it to the floor. “One more thing: I  _ quit.” _

Alarm flashed across his face. “You’re leaving?”

“I’m not  _ leaving,” _ she said, wiping her streaming nose. “I’m  _ quitting. _ From now on, you can mend your own suits and mop your own floors. I’ve been working without a day off since I got here—”

“No you haven’t,” Howl interrupted. “You’ve been doing what you please the whole time—”

“—and I’m old and tired and sick, and I’m  _ through. _ I’m going to bed.” With a decided sniffle, she hobbled to the cubbyhole under the stairs and pulled her blankets up to her ears, and promptly ruined her speech by starting to cry.

“Sophie?” Howl said. At the sound of his footsteps, she pressed her face deeper into the pillow.

“Go away,” she mumbled.

“Are you really sick?” She heard a rustling behind her that might be him squatting by her mattress. “Do you have a fever?”

“This isn’t about me,” she said.

“Who’s it about, then?” he demanded.

“I don’t know! Leave me alone.” She probably  _ did _ have a fever; her skin felt like it was burning. Her tears were hot on her cheeks. 

His footsteps retreated, followed by crackling and rustling that she refused to roll over and investigate. Howl’s muttering, however, carried perfectly well in the quiet castle. “Working without a day off! As if I could make her stop.”

“I think she’s right,” Calcifer said gleefully. “She’s been working for weeks and you haven’t paid her once. You’ve been exploiting her since you hired her.”

“I  _ didn’t _ hire her,” Howl said, exasperated. Then his voice dropped to an indistinguishable whisper.

“Oh, alright,” Calcifer grumbled. “Sophie? Do you need medicine?” he called.

She sniffed. “Maybe.”

She fell asleep without realizing; it seemed like one moment she was looking at her alcove wall painted gold by late-evening light, and then she opened her eyes and it was many hours past sunset. Her nose was stuffed; her chin was slick with dried drool. She did not enjoy being sick.

Water—that’s what she needed. She crawled out of bed and her heel knocked into something on the ground. A little bottle, sloshing with a dark liquid. She squinted in the dim firelight that reached under the stairs. In addition to the bottle, there was a note and a glass of water. She took a sip of water, wiped her face with a dampened sleeve, and crept closer to the light to read the note. It was written in very large, blocky letters.  _ IF YOU ARE COUGHING/SNEEZING/HEAD HURTS, DRINK ONE SMALL SIP OF NYQUIL.  _ Sophie turned over the bottle in her hand.  _ NyQuil: Nighttime Colds Medicine, _ it said.

“Only one sip?” Sophie said, unscrewing the bottle. It must be a potent potion.

At the sound of her voice, Calcifer flickered up sleepily. “Go back to bed,” he said.

“I’m going,” Sophie said, taking a sip. Her face screwed up. “Oh, that tastes terrible.”

“Howl went through the black-down door to get it,” Calcifer drowsed.

Sophie sat on the edge of her mattress to drink another sip of water, then crawled under the sheets. “Did he, now?” she said.

She woke up again late in the morning, to the sound of Howl searching through the cupboards. “Why don’t we have any eggs?” he asked.

“Hey, I’m the wrong person to ask,” Calcifer crackled.

Sophie caught a glimpse of Howl as he strode across the room. There was a metallic clink, and a wordless noise of irritation. “The coin purse is almost empty! Where did all our money go?”

“You spent it on those cloaks,” Calcifer pointed out.

“Ah, I’d forgotten about those,” Howl said. He was silent for a moment. “Remember when it was just the two of us? Barely starting out—young, scrappy and hungry?”

“When the castle kept breaking down and we never had enough logs for me, or food for you?” Calcifer said. “Eh. I don’t miss it.”

Howl sighed. “Neither do I.”

Wood cracked and sparked, and fabric rustled. It was only Sophie’s unwillingness to be discovered eavesdropping that kept her from sitting up to see what was happening. Presently, Calcifer said, “You know she doesn’t plan to stay forever.”

“Of course I know,” Howl muttered.

When she woke up again, it was to a loud pounding on the door. “Porthaven door,” Calcifer called.

Howl came into view as he answered the door. Sophie craned her neck to see who it was: a balding man that had come by a week ago. “Are you Sorcerer Jenkin?” he demanded.

“I am,” Howl said easily. “And you must be the uncle of that sweet young girl who was here yesterday.”

_ “And _ the day before,” the man said. “I’ve been waiting for my finding spell for three days now, and I’m not leaving until I—”

“I have it right here,” Howl cut in. “And I’m terribly sorry you had to wait so long. Magic is a tricky thing, and none of us want to handle a rushed spell, do we?” The man grunted and Howl plunged ahead, at his most charming. “But this one’s cured to perfection. Once you get home, take it into the pasture and pour milk over it, then call your missing cow’s name three times. This needle will point to her. Do you understand?”

“Well then,” said the man. The deluge of instructions—and the knobbly bundle pushed into his hands—had clearly distracted him from his irritation. “And if it doesn’t work?”

“It’ll work. I made it myself,” Howl said, with a touch of haughtiness. Then, seeing the man’s expression sour, he hurried to add, “But if it doesn’t, I’ll make another one free of charge, since you were so patient about the delay.”

“Well then!” said the man again. “That’s very generous of you.”

“Good luck finding your cow,” Howl said, and Sophie could picture the brilliant smile he flashed as the man bowed, farewelled and disappeared. Howl closed the door and turned. “Sophie, you’re awake!”

Drat, she had been caught. She sat up and yawned unconvincingly. “What time is it?”

“Almost suppertime, I think,” he said. “Not that we have much in the way of food.”

“No one’s been to market in a few days,” Sophie said, climbing out of bed and wondering if it was worth the effort to change out of her nightgown just to eat supper. She decided it was not.

“And the coin purse is almost empty,” Howl sighed. Sophie’s eyes darted to the loose brick where Michael’s secret stash of money was hidden, but didn’t say anything. She would wait until they were a little hungrier.

“I think we still have some potatoes,” she said. “And a bit of cheese.” Before she could fetch either item, Howl blocked her path.

“Didn’t you quit yesterday?”

Oh. She had forgotten about that. “Well, I’ve had my day off now,” she hedged, skirting around him.

“No, you haven’t,” he said, moving to block her. “It hasn’t been a full day yet. And you’re sick, besides; that doesn’t count.”

“What are you saying?” she demanded, a little alarmed. Maybe she had pushed her luck too far by quitting; declaring herself employed might not work again, now that she had given him an escape. Was he finally going to throw her out?

But he just shooed her toward the table. “I’m  _ saying _ you need to rest, you stubborn old woman. Sit down. I’m perfectly capable of making supper myself.”

Sophie could not think of an objection, hard though she tried, and let herself be nudged into the chair by the fireplace. Calcifer grinned at her with his fearful fiery teeth. “Feeling better?” he asked.

“Quite a bit better,” she said. “Though my head still feels like it’s stuffed with cotton.”

“Wish  _ I _ got a day off,” Calcifer said enviously.

“If anyone’s earned it, it’s you,” Sophie flattered. She should finish cleaning Michael’s room—but she was supposed to be resting until tomorrow, apparently. Not that she had to do what Howl said, of course, but she had the nagging feeling that cleaning his house against his wishes would not be much of a victory. She stretched out her hands and Calcifer burned brighter, telling her about what she had slept through, and Howl peeled potatoes behind her. Maybe she would sit for a while longer.

After a bit, Calcifer subsided into a pleasant crackling, which was fortunate, because Sophie had stopped paying attention. Howl hummed tunelessly as he chopped potatoes. He had been behaving oddly all day. Almost agreeable. She wondered suddenly if this was an apology, in Howl-fashion, for their row the day before. But who was there to have strong-armed him into it? Not Calcifer, surely!

She turned the matter over in her head as she retrieved her basket of fabric scraps and  _ Advanced Quilting Patterns. _ It wasn’t turning out quite like she had expected, possibly because she kept forgetting to consult the pattern. And a good neat quilt required so much  _ stitching— _ to piece together the cut-out scraps into their proper shapes, and then to connect the shapes, and then more to attach the front bits to the back bits and keep the batting in place—not that she had thought to buy batting. Maybe she would just make a table runner. Maybe she would make a very ugly vest.

During supper, she thought again of Michael’s room, which was still not clean, and decided that if she was not to clean today Howl would just have to do it for her. As she chewed her potatoes, she schemed.

“These aren’t bad,” she admitted. He seemed to have taken the seasoning approach that loads of butter covered a multitude of sins, a philosophy she agreed with.

Howl raised his eyebrows. “Surprised they aren’t boiled tasteless? I’ve kept my own house before, my good Sophie; I do know how to cook.”

“Pity you never learned to clean,” she muttered.

To her surprise, he laughed. “Would you believe me if I said I didn’t notice the mess until you started cleaning it?”

“I don’t think that helps your case,” Calcifer said.

“I’m forever on trial,” he sighed, forking potato peels into the fire.

Sophie scraped the last of her potatoes into her mouth. “It’s a good thing I came, if that is true,” she said, trying to work up an appropriate level of disgruntlement to be convincing. “Even if I end up breaking my neck cleaning Michael’s room.”

“And how do you plan to do that?” Howl asked.

“Well, I’ll have to put the stepladder on a chair to reach the ceiling,” she said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Sophie, I believe you have a death wish.”

She shrugged, standing to put her dish in the sink. “How else am I going to get it clean?”

“I can clean it for you,” he said, exasperated.

“You’ll only let it sit for a week,” she said. “I’m sure it’ll be faster to do it myself.”

“I’ll do it now,” he said with dignity. “So you can stop brandishing that rag.”

Sophie dropped the rag back into the drawer from which she had gotten it. As Howl climbed the stairs, she flashed Calcifer a crafty smile, and his crackling laughter followed her up.

Howl stopped just inside the doorway, head tilted back. “Did he draw all this?”

There was no one else who would have drawn it, so Sophie didn’t bother to answer. It  _ was _ a rather impressive representation of the night sky; not just accurate, as far as she could tell, but somehow rendered lovingly, like a friend’s face.

“Do you know these constellations?” he asked. His tone was odd.

“Some of them,” she said, looking at the faint chalk-marks above them. She pointed vaguely. “Spindle—anchor—seven birds.” Martha or Lettie would have known more. On long summer nights when they were young, she would let her sisters convince her to lean out their window, shoulders jostling and elbows braced against the casement, and Martha would worm her arm out from between them to point out shapes, and Lettie would make up stories about them. Suddenly she felt what must have caused the oddness in Howl’s voice. There was something terribly lonely about this room, like Michael had brought a piece of the night sky into it, beautiful and cold and emotionless. She hunched her shoulders. “Is it magic?”

Howl shrugged. “It’s not a spell, if that’s what you mean.” He dragged the stepladder to the middle of the room, lifting his hands to frame the constellations, like he was trying to measure them. “This is a spring sky. A few weeks ago, I think. Do you remember which direction Lucine fell from?” he asked abruptly.

She closed her eyes, trying to remember that night. “South? Southwest?”

There was a sound of the ladder being scooted sideways. “Here he is.” She opened her eyes to see him mount the stepladder and moved quickly to steady it. “There is magic besides spells, you know,” he added conversationally. “If you do an experiment and write it down, it’s science. If not, it’s magic.” The amusement in his voice made her suspect this was a private joke. He spidered his fingers across the ceiling to the star in Lucine’s old spot and tapped it, muttering a few soft words, and the whole mass of chalked stars dusted down to leave the ceiling clean.

“See? No need for broken necks,” he said, climbing down and brushing his hands together. Chalk powder settled over the bed and floor and window sill, like dust, making it look like the room had been empty for far longer than the two days since Michael’s abrupt departure. Sophie frowned. Leaving the room dirty felt like pretending nothing had happened. But scrubbing it all clean hardly felt better. Her heart ached, like it had when her sisters moved out—except that was worse, because she had lost them both one right after the other, and that was better, because at least she had gotten time to prepare.  _ I want to go back to the way things were before, _ she thought, and couldn’t for the life of her say when  _ before _ was.

Howl carried the stepladder downstairs and put it away, while Sophie filled the dishpan. But before she could put it to use, Calcifer said, “Howl, she’s cleaning again.”

The rag was plucked from her hand. Sophie whirled, betrayed. “Calcifer!”

“I couldn’t let you waste your day off,” Calcifer said in answer to Sophie’s narrow-eyed glare. He didn’t look at all sorry.

“Sophie, can you go one day without cleaning?” Howl asked pleasantly, plunging the rag into the dishwater  _ she _ had been aiming for and beginning to wash plates.

“I  _ can,” _ she said, “once everything’s  _ clean.” _

“What an exhausting way to live!” Howl said. The water sloshing over the edge of the dishpan was specked with suds and potato. “I can’t imagine what your hurry was to clean Michael’s room. Unless you want it?”

“No!” she said, affronted.

“Don’t tell me you _ like _ your little hidey-hole under the stairs,” he said.

“I do, actually,” she said.

He didn’t press further. Instead, after a moment of splashing and clinking dishes, he said, “You should stay.”

Calcifer fizzled. Sophie was instantly on guard. “Where are you going?”

“Pardon?” he said.

She wasn’t fooled by the innocence of his tone. “I’m coming too,” she decided.

“Dear Sophie, I haven’t told you I’m  _ going _ anywhere.”

Which was precisely why she was suspicious. Crossing her arms, Sophie said, “Well, you’d better hurry up and tell me then.”

Howl cast a long-suffering look at Calcifer, but Sophie would not be dissuaded. Turning as he dried a pair of forks, Howl said, “I’m going to the Waste.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” said Calcifer immediately.

“Why on earth would you go there?” Sophie demanded.

Howl pursed his lips before answering. “Now that the Witch is gone, I might have luck finding Prince Justin and Wizard Suliman.” He dropped the forks with a clink into the clean flowerpot that Sophie had designated as their silverware holder in the absence of drawer space.

“You don’t care about finding Prince Justin and Wizard Suliman,” she said.

“Whether or not that’s true, I  _ do _ care about the rather unflattering wanted posters the King has hung around Kingsbury. I have a career to think about, dear Sophie, and finding the King’s brother and Royal Wizard would certainly help my reputation.” That was a sensible enough reason, but it didn’t explain why he told her to stay before mentioning the plan to her—or even to Calcifer, based on the narrow looks the fire demon was trading with the wizard.

“And what if the Witch left traps for you?” Calcifer asked.

Sophie latched onto the objection. “He’s right. She could have left all sorts of nasty magic.”

He waved his sudsy hand. “Good heavens, next time I’ll bring you two a permission slip to sign!”

“I can’t write,” Calcifer said, fiery green eyebrows arrowing.

“There’s that plan scuttled,” Howl said.

Undeterred, Sophie said, “There could be another curse.”

“She wouldn’t leave a primed curse lying around to be tripped over,” he said, like this was very obvious.

“What about her fire demon?” Sophie said.

“It’ll be weaker without her. If it is lurking around, it won’t be a threat,” he said, though she didn’t think the thought had occurred to him before, and he didn’t look pleased now that she had suggested it. If the Witch’s fire demon alone was half as fearsome as the Witch had been during the fight over the harbor, it was fearsome indeed.

“And what if it is?” Sophie prodded.

“Then the world will be freed of my wickedness at last,” he said, drying his hands on the dish towel. “Won’t that be a relief?”

“Well,  _ I _ don’t want to die,” Calcifer said. “I think Sophie should go with you.”

Sophie forgave the fire demon for his earlier betrayal. “It’s settled, then,” she said. She might not know magic, but she could keep Howl from doing anything truly stupid as he wandered his old flame’s house. And if the Witch’s fire demon—the one thing keeping the curse on Michael—really was burning away in the castle in the Waste, she was full-willing to take a crack at it even without magic, she thought fiercely.

“It’s really not,” Howl said. He must have seen the glint in her eye.  _ “Sophie.” _

“It’s two against one,” Calcifer crackled, with a wicked grin.

“This isn’t a democracy,” Howl said, but his heart wasn’t in it. 

Sophie brushed chalk from her nightgown with a sort of finality. “We’ll have to leave in the morning, since I’m on holiday today,” she said. “I’ll make porridge, since we don’t have eggs.”

He gave a theatrical sigh. “You’re dreadfully pushy,” he said, and they all understood that meant she would have her way. Sophie took a swig of NyQuil and went back to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes i devoted an inordinately long amount of time to finding out how nyquil was packaged in 1986  
> also other worlds having different night skies and therefore different constellations is one of my FAVORITE fantasy concepts... no matter where you are, humans be telling stories about the stars  
> thank you for all your comments!! they are such a joy to read :D


	6. In which Howl and Sophie visit the Waste

If Sophie hadn’t been going to the Waste with Howl, she imagined he could have just magicked himself there. Since she was, they each had to take a seven-league boot, which escaped last-place on her list of preferred transportation only because she had been in Howl’s car. Howl seemed unbothered by the delay. “I’m glad to see you’ve brought your cudgel,” he said, holding her elbow as she pulled on one boot. A brisk moor wind caught smoke from the castle and blew it like a banner overhead. “Wouldn’t want to face the Witch’s fire demon unarmed.”

They pointed their feet toward the Waste and whooshed off. Almost immediately, they landed knee-deep in a lake, and then Howl stepped and Sophie did not, and when she did he was not where she landed. She stood in a mass of heather, purple and humming with bees, and looked at her water-logged skirt. Why, exactly, had she insisted on coming?

A few seconds later, Howl appeared a stone’s throw away, tucked the boot under one elbow, and high-stepped through the heather. “Next time, I’m counting down to our first step.”

“And I think I’d better hold your arm to keep you from wandering off,” she said. “You do know the way, don’t you?”

“Of course I know the way,” he said, replacing the seven-league boot on his foot. The bees seemed to have mistaken his perfume for a strange new flower and swarmed around him; he waved at them ineffectually. “Ready?” Sophie locked her elbow through his, which was rather awkward, as he was a good deal taller than her. “One, two, three—” This time Sophie stepped and Howl did not, and she felt like her arm would wrench off as he was dragged behind her for three and a half leagues. The _whoosh_ of air pulled wisps of wiry grey hair from her hasty braid. He landed on his knees.

“You didn’t step!” she said.

“You were meant to go on _step,”_ he said, rising awkwardly so as to avoid stepping on the seven-league boot. “I was going to count one, two, three, _step—”_

“Then you should have _said_ that.” They clamped elbows again very firmly. It took twelve steps from there to the moment when the Witch’s fortress appeared like a pebble on the horizon, and another eight to actually land in front of it, mostly because Howl kept muttering about hypotenuses and making her take zigzag steps so they would land directly in front of the door and not two leagues away.

Sophie was disappointed when they did arrive. She thought the fortress should be as stylish and imposing as the Witch, but it instead took after her dull, formless companion. It appeared to be built out of chimney pots all honey-combed together into a big labyrinthine mass, like an ant’s nest blown up to monstrous proportions. “It’s not much to look at,” she said. Still clinging to his elbow, she dropped her walking stick and bent to take off her boot.

Howl leaned over to do the same. “Were you expecting spindly turrets? Dripping jewels? Great menacing gargoyles?” One-legged, he swayed so wildly that she was convinced he would lose his balance and she would have to throw him backwards to keep him from landing on his seven-league boot and disappearing from the fortress. She was not at all sure that she was up to the task of tackling him to the ground and was therefore quite relieved when he removed the boot without incident.

She retrieved her walking stick. “I was expecting a doormat, at the very least.”

“Dear Sophie, we don’t even have a doormat at the castle,” he said.

“I know.” Leaving the boots on the stoop, they stepped through the doorway.

Chimney pots had fallen from the walls and roof, leaving gap-toothed holes that let in shafts of hot morning light. A warm wind sighed through the chamber, stirring a layer of sand that had buried any signs of habitation. Other than that, all was quiet. Sophie would have believed that she and Howl were the first living beings to stand here in a thousand years. 

“I eagerly await your thoughts on the Witch’s interior design,” Howl said lightly.

Sophie, who had been about to voice just that, thought better of it. “I didn’t come to gossip,” she said, knocking the end of her stick against the ground. The familiar thump heartened her. “Or to loiter on the stoop. We have a Royal Wizard to find.”

The Witch’s fortress was nothing like the moving castle. It was far larger, and far emptier, with no clutter of books or jars of spices. No fire crackled, no magic hummed, and no footprints marked the sandy floor. Sophie was almost relieved when she passed through a narrow doorway and saw a row of austere shelves and a shattered mirror on the wall. She had worried that this was the wrong fortress.

“Do try not to touch anything,” Howl said as she stood on tiptoes to see onto a high shelf.

It held a row of wooden bowls that bore scorch-marks and silvery streaks of some dried liquid. The lower shelves were lined with empty bottles. None of it seemed to have been used or moved in quite some time. Of course not; the Witch was gone.

“Do you think she was keeping Wizard Suliman and the Prince in a dungeon?” Sophie asked. Howl did not respond. She turned and saw that he was peering deeply into the broken mirror. “Howl,” she said, irritated. He leaned closer and closer to the glass. His breath fogged the shattered surface. There was something vacant in his expression that made her heart give a frightened, sideways twitch. She stumped toward him as fast as she could over the uneven sand drifts. “Howl!” He startled at the pull she gave his sleeve. “Don’t kiss the mirror!”

“I wasn’t going to,” he said. Reflected light made his eyes glassy. He blinked twice. “It’s enchanted.”

“You can’t go around kissing cursed things,” she said sharply.

“I told you, I wasn’t going to,” he said, tugging his sleeve loose. “There’s more magic lingering than I expected.” He left the mirror and stepped over a chunk of fallen masonry in the next doorway.

Sophie eyed the obstacle. “I thought the Witch was dead.”

“She is,” said Howl. “Her fire demon isn’t.” Sophie tried to clamber over the fallen stone, but her stiff knees would not cooperate, so she pressed herself against the wall and squeezed alongside it. She stuck. “If you’re afraid of meeting it—”

“I’m not,” Sophie said firmly, pulling herself free and stumbling into the room beside him. The sand here was sparser. Her walking stick hit tile with a loud click. She did not like the idea of lingering magic, but it was no surprise that the Witch’s power persisted—after all, she was still old. There was no point in her mind to worrying about whether the fire demon would appear. If it did, it did; if not, all the better.

Howl seemed to be following a less pragmatic train of thought. He looked unsettled. The shafts of sunlight grew fewer and dimmer as they went further into the fortress. Periodically, dust rained down over them, catching in Sophie’s hair and collar and the creases of her sleeves. The wind keened in the distance.

Only after they had passed through several branched hallways and rooms with many doors that Sophie thought it might have been wise to mark their path. She looked behind her. The tile in this hall was sandless and did not show their footprints.

Howl saw her backward glance. “I imagine you’re getting tired. Perhaps we should turn back.”

She was not fooled by his pleasant tone. He would quite like an excuse to stop the search. “Not at all,” she lied.

“Your energy is enviable.” He tested the doorknob of a great rusting metal door, and it gave way with a creak. Inside the room was very dark. “I’ll hold the door,” he said. “It’s heavy. You go ahead.”

Sophie snorted and strode in ahead of him, walking stick lifted to keep from bumping into a wall. Instead, she felt the soft waft of magic across her face. She cried out.

“Are you alright?” Howl called.

She was too busy flailing her stick about to answer. The gauzy thing clung to her fingers and face. The door banged shut and the thin light vanished. Sophie stumbled back, wiping her hands furiously across her skin, as she realized that it was not magic that had brushed over her but spider silk. She shuddered at the sensation. “It’s just cobwebs,” she said. “Open the door again so I have some light.” She heard the scuffling of Howl’s hand searching for the doorknob, but no light came. “Did you lose it?” she asked. The scuffling went silent. Her skin prickled. “Howl, is that you?”

There was no reply. Sophie felt dizzy. She had assumed that Howl had run toward her cry. How foolish. Whatever was in the room was not him. “Prince Justin? Wizard Suliman?” she tried doubtfully. The scuffling resumed. She did not think a fire demon would scratch like that. Perhaps it was a wild animal. She took a step away from the door and the noise, and more cobwebs trailed across her skin. Maybe the Witch had been fond of spiders. Maybe she had cared for them, fed them, let them grow to a hideous size, and now that she was gone they scuttled through the fortress looking for prey. Her breath was short.

“Stop that,” she said to herself, very quietly. She didn’t dare shout again.

Then there was a _thud,_ and a square of light opened in the wall. “Sophie, are you there?” Something dark and squat pounced at Howl with a shrill sound, attaching itself to his leg. He yelled, kicking out, and it went flying. The door slammed shut once more. He swore.

She moved toward the sound. When her hand brushed his arm he jumped. “It’s me,” she hissed, before he could kick out again. Her nose was full of the scent of lavender.

“Why did you shriek? Did that thing attack you?”

“It was just spiderwebs,” she said. “What took you so long?”

“The door jammed,” he said tersely. “And I think it’s jammed again.”

“Then we’d better find another one.” It had grown chilly. “We haven’t found Prince Justin or Wizard Suliman yet, so there must be further to go,” she reasoned. She wished for a scarf. She wished she could wrap herself in one of Howl’s ridiculous sleeves.

“Wait,” whispered Howl. “Do you hear that noise?”

In the distant darkness, there was a soft scuffling sound. Sophie’s heart sank. “We need a light,” she whispered. “And quickly.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have a spare lantern hidden in my pocket,” he said.

The scuffling was drawing closer. Her grip on his unseen arm tightened. “Aren’t you a wizard? Work a light spell,” she said heatedly.

“I can’t!”

“Why not?” she hissed.

“It doesn’t work on Tuesdays,” he hissed back.

“Then think of something else!” She put out her stick, prodding along the wall for the seam of a door jamb. Instead, she hit something that quivered. Behind her, Howl was muttering something incomprehensible. She reached out again and prodded something moving. The wall began to squeal shrilly. Sophie trembled with fear. “Howl!”

The whole room shivered, and thunder cracked. She dearly hoped that it was Howl’s doing and not more lingering magic. “There!” Sophie heard a pop, and a click, and then a blinding arc of light cut through the darkness, illuminating cascades of cobwebs and clusters of glinting eyes. The light jumped unevenly across the wall.

Sophie glimpsed a dark doorway. “I see it,” she said, and tottered as fast as she could toward it on legs that felt about to give out. The narrow corridor twisted and turned in the light Howl had summoned, and then ended in an ink-black curtain. They did not slow to push it aside, and it came down as they tore through. Sophie could not breathe. A flurry of movement brought the curtain off them and she leaned heavily on her walking stick, pressing one knobby hand to her thrashing heart.

They were in a circular room. She twisted to make sure nothing followed them from the dark corridor. A gap in the ceiling let in a column of sunlight that turned Howl’s cobweb-threaded hair to gold. Another gap in the wall opened to the Waste, letting in drifts of sand. The room’s final entrance was a door to a long stone hallway, and from the other end Sophie heard the distant rustle of flames.

Howl’s face was very pale. “I think we’ve fulfilled our civic duty and searched long enough for the Prince.”

“If he and Wizard Suliman are here, we have to find them.”

“No, we actually don’t,” he said.

Sophie opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again. He had a point. He had not, after all, taken the King’s money. It was really remarkable he had come so far. But she had not braved the journey to give up here. She could not stand the thought of abandoning the missing men when they might be so close. “Alright,” she decided. “Go wait by the entrance.” She stumped toward the door.

“Where are you going?” Howl demanded.

“To find Prince Justin and Wizard Suliman,” she said. If the crackling flames belonged to the Witch’s fire demon, she could only hope it could be reasoned with, like Calcifer and Lucine.

Behind her, Howl swore, then she heard long strides and he reappeared at her side. “I’m beginning to think you have no regard for your safety whatsoever,” he said. “Or mine!”

“I said to wait by the entrance,” she said, inexplicably pleased.

“Unfortunately,” he said, sounding quite put out, “I was taught not to let old women march alone through demon-infested fortresses.” He was still holding the silvery metal tube he had used to light the spider room. He tossed it into the air and it vanished with a pop.

The door at the end of the hall was ajar. Sophie could distinctly hear rustling flames. She screwed up her courage and pushed the door open.

The fire was only the ordinary sort, burning low in a deep brazier that overflowed with many days’ worth of ash. Sophie’s relief lasted until she saw the body.

Beside and a little behind the brazier was an imposing stone seat, and in it slumped a human body. Or, at least, most of it. “I think I found Prince Justin,” she muttered. The body had been there for a while, if the drifts of ash in the corners of the throne and crevices of its green uniform were anything to go by. And it had no head. It radiated an unmistakable wrongness. She and Howl approached with reluctance. “Is it him? Or Wizard Suliman?”

“I think it’s both,” said Howl grimly. “Or parts of them, at least.”

Sophie checked the body’s wrist. It was warm to the touch, but in a doughy sort of way, like it had sat too long in the sun. She was surprised to find a pulse. “You mean to say that this thing is some sort of… jigsaw puzzle of Prince Justin and Wizard Suliman?” He nodded. “Where’s the rest?”

“I don’t _know,”_ he said. His gaze was pinned to the spot where the jigsaw man’s head should be. “What did she want with all of us?” he murmured. It must be quite a shock to see two men you knew taken apart and put together like this. She gave Howl a firm pat on the arm.

“We’d better take him back to the King.”

“The King won’t want him like this,” Howl said. “He’ll probably think I did it.”

“Then keep him at the castle until someone finds the rest of them,” she said. She took a bracing breath and wrapped the body’s limp arm around her shoulder. Its touch made Sophie’s skin crawl. _“Howl,”_ she said.

He pulled his gaze from the emptiness above the body’s shoulders and begrudgingly took his other arm. They dragged him from the throne and back to the previous room with the crumbling wall. It took all of Sophie’s concentration to balance the body’s weight on her shoulders and not drop it in disgust. After that it was just a matter of trudging around the outside of the fortress until they found the stoop. The seven-league boots were where they had been left, with the addition of a near-translucent scorpion sunbathing on the toe of the left boot. It only took a dozen long strides to reach the castle on the moors. 

Calcifer’s purple eyes went tall at the sight of the body. With a whistling noise, he said, “He doesn’t look so good.” He watched as Howl tried to slide the body into the chair by the fireplace only to have Sophie catch all its weight and nearly fall into the hearth.

“Not here!” she said. She did not want to look at him while she tried to sleep. “Let’s put him in Michael’s room.” She swung around so the body’s limp arm wiggled at Howl. He took it again, with a put-upon sigh, and they turned sideways to go up the stairs. When Sophie was halfway up, the body slipped and bowled into her; Howl barely caught the wrist, and Sophie, leaping aside, let go entirely. The body splayed down the stairs like laundry over a washboard. Howl squatted on the top step, red-faced, clutching the body’s wrist to keep it from tumbling down once more. With a great heave, he hauled the whole jigsaw man up, scooping him into his arms and carrying him into Michael’s room. Sophie shuffled up after to see him lay the headless body on the worm-eaten mattress. When she changed the sheets she hadn’t imagined the next occupant would be the King’s brother. Well, half of him.

“It’s a good thing we cleaned the ceiling,” she said, flicking ash from the body’s green uniform, then fluffing the pillow.

“My dear Sophie, I don’t think he cares,” said Howl. Brushing back his hair, he felt cobwebs and sighed with artful despondency. “Calcifer,” he called. “Please heat some water.”

Precisely two hours later, Howl left the castle, his suit spotless and his hair free of cobwebs. Tucked under his arm was the guitar. The broken string waved a feeble farewell as the door shut. He was going to see Lettie, then. Sophie cleaned her dress with a stiff brush, giving him plenty of time to make it to Mrs. Fairfax’s before she took some coins from under the loose brick and crept furtively into Porthaven to buy batting for her quilt and some fresh fruit to eat on the road. The brisk, humid coastal breeze lifted her spirits. Living with a jigsaw body in the second bedroom was really not that much stranger than living with a cowardly wizard in the first or a demon in the fireplace. She only wished she knew where the Witch’s fire demon had gotten to.

There was a wanted poster of Howl pasted to a signpost along the way. The resemblance was terrible. She quite liked it. Tearing it down, she folded it under her shawl, and showed it to Calcifer when she got back to the castle.

“His hair looks like a corncob,” he said appreciatively. “Read it again!”

Sophie cleared her throat, raising the poster with enthusiasm. “WANTED for crimes against the King!”

“A strong start,” Calcifer crackled.

“Howl Pendragon, also known as Horrible Howl, Wizard Howl, and Pendragon the Great, in addition to false names such as…” This section was long; Sophie had to take a breath to make it through the list.

“Have they figured out Sorcerer Jenkin yet?” Calcifer asked.

Sophie checked the list. “No. Nor Sylvester Oak—that’s the one he uses when he’s visiting Lettie.”

“Who?” asked Calcifer.

“My sister. He’s courting her,” Sophie said, scowling at Howl’s corn-cob hair on the wanted poster. She hoped Lettie’s hard head and good sense could withstand Howl’s charm, but he could be disarmingly pleasant, when you didn’t know better.

“I thought Michael was seeing your sister?” said Calcifer.

“That’s my other sister,” Sophie said, then got quiet. “Or, was. Michael didn’t go into Market Chipping after catching Lucine, did he?”

“I don’t think so,” said Calcifer.

“And now he’s in Kingsbury,” said Sophie. Poor Martha. “I wish I could go to Cesari’s and see that she’s alright.”

“Why can’t you?”

Incredulous, Sophie pulled at one wrinkled cheek. “She wouldn’t recognize me.”

“You could just poke your nose in.” Calcifer gave something like a shrug, adjusting the logs beneath him. “Or not. Read the rest of the poster, the end is the best part.”

Sophie’s dramatic recitation was just ending when they heard the doorknob turn. She crumpled the poster hastily and pushed it into the fireplace. “Quick, burn it,” she said, yanking an armful of batting into her lap to look occupied and overturning her basket of neatly stacked scraps in the process. Calcifer flared begrudgingly and the poster crinkled into dark curls of ash. Howl entered with the guitar over one shoulder and a brown paper parcel tucked into his elbow. He hung the guitar on the wall, broken string flopping forlornly, and unwrapped the parcel to reveal two candied apples. “Did you buy those with the last of the money in the coin purse?” she demanded.

He was unabashed. “I think,” he said, “that conquering the fortress of the Witch of the Waste deserves celebration.”

“I thought you were visiting Lettie,” said Sophie. Howl found a knife and sliced the apples.

“I was,” he said, then sighed. “Or, I tried. She didn’t want my company, or my gifts. I fear Miss Lettie has forgotten me altogether,” he said.

“Good,” she said severely.

“You would be so uncharitable.” There was a certain unsteadiness to his movement suggesting that he may have celebrated the expedition (or mourned his unsuccessful visit) with something stronger than candied apples. “I don’t suppose you remember what it is to be young and in love,” he said, his words sticky with caramel. _“Have_ you ever been in love, Mrs. Nose?”

“Not the way you do it,” she said, trying to make sense of her lapful of fabric without making it obvious that she had not, in fact, been sewing immediately prior to his arrival.

“No sweet words for you, then, I suppose? No moonlight strolls or stolen kisses in the garden? No thousand sonnets written on perfumed paper?”

She could imagine him doing all these perfectly, and the thought made her snort. No, indeed! “If a man wrote me a thousand sonnets, I would think he loved poetry, not me. No wonder you’ve had so much trouble wooing Lettie.”

He was lounging against the wall, or possibly leaning against it to keep from falling over. His fair hair shone in the firelight and he gave an angelic grin. “Enlighten me then. How does one woo a Hatter woman?”

“You talk nonsense when you’re drunk,” she chided.

“Not half so much as I do sober,” he said. “Tell me, how did the illustrious Mr. Nose win over that hard heart of yours?”

“Yes, tell us, Sophie,” Calcifer said. She shot him a glare. He grinned wickedly. He knew perfectly well there was no Mr. Nose.

“I’ll do no such thing,” she said. “And if you’re going to stay here and pester me, you can make yourself useful and sort these,” she said, pushing the jumbled basket of quilt pieces with her foot. “By shape, too, not just color,” she said. He took the basket obligingly and sat cross-legged by Calcifer, but seemed to take her offer of a task as an invitation to keep pestering, and plied her with probing questions about her youth and family. Sophie scrambled to invent answers. The more she struggled the more maliciously Calcifer crackled. Once she was certain she had been driven to perjury over the color scheme at her second husband’s step-daughter’s wedding, she decided she had had quite enough of his interrogation. She confiscated the basket, the contents of which had long since been sorted, and said he could read to her or be quiet.

Howl pulled out the poetry book and she glared with such ferocity that he closed it immediately. “I think that look turned me to stone,” he said cheerfully. He disappeared upstairs and she assumed he had gone to bed, until he reappeared a few minutes later with a stack of books. “Here we are! Comedy or tragedy?”

“Comedy,” said Sophie, at the same time that Calcifer said, “Tragedy!”

“None of your human comedies are funny,” Calcifer complained. “You need some deaths to make it interesting.”

“If there’s no happy ending, I don’t want to hear it,” Sophie said.

“Perhaps a mystery, then,” said Howl diplomatically, and pulled a book from the stack. It was a rather melodramatic story, with poisonings and elopements and several counts of mistaken identity. Calcifer swirled up and down in the fireplace, trying to guess the murderer and casting uneven light over the room. After the events of that morning the castle seemed especially cosy. Even the spiderwebs in the corners seemed companionable. Howl was an animated reader. Remembering how fond young Mari had seemed of him, Sophie wondered if he sometimes read to her.

He probably likes the sound of his own voice, she thought drowsily, resting her needlework in her lap for a moment. That was why he agreed to read. And instead of picking up her needlework again, she drifted to sleep.


	7. In which Sophie is caught in the rain

The next morning, Sophie made porridge again, as no one had been to market in almost a week now, and the cupboard was becoming quite bare. Howl was in the bathroom, singing some strange song—or perhaps it was an incantation, considering how many times he repeated the phrase ‘find me somebody to love.’

“Has he run out of girls in Upper Folding?” she grunted, shaking some cinnamon into the porridge.

“You should take some of the money from the loose brick and buy some eggs,” Calcifer said. His voice was muffled under the porridge pot. He did not like to boil water.

“When Howl sells another spell I’ll go to market,” Sophie said.

“That could be ages,” Calcifer whined. “He’ll have you eating seaweed before he starts worrying about money.”

“That man manages to be so unconcerned with money that the virtue wraps around and becomes a vice again,” Sophie said. “Maybe the King would pay a reward for finding the jigsaw man.”

“Or maybe he would just arrest Howl, and then when he escaped we’d all have to move to Montalbino,” Calcifer said.

“If it looks like we’re going to have to move to Montalbino I’ll make sure to buy some eggs first,” Sophie said. The porridge was ready; she slid it from the flames and packed ash around it to keep the pot warm.

Calcifer flamed up with relief. “Might be worth it.”

To her consternation, Sophie found that she had made enough porridge for three again, despite her efforts not to waste food. Calcifer complained mightily when she fed him the third portion. Howl slipped out into Porthaven and she went to the closet and put on the dark purple cloak that made one look like a peddler woman. “How close is the castle to Market Chipping?” she asked.

“As close as ever,” Calcifer said. “Are you going somewhere?”

“I’m going to see Martha,” she said. “Can you bring the castle around again in a few hours?”

“Yes,” said Calcifer. “You know, that cloak doesn’t make much of a difference.”

“Does it not?” said Sophie. She tried to look in the mirror, but the enchantment did not extend to her reflection.

The fire whistled and popped. “Grey hair, dull clothes, lots of wrinkles.”

“That’s just what people look like when they’re old,” Sophie said. She didn’t, strictly speaking, need the disguise. No one she knew would know her under the curse, and even if the King’s wanted posters had reached Market Chipping, they would not mention her. Still, the extra layer comforted her as she took the steep path down into town. The air held the stickiness of a building storm, and a wet wind ran over the grass under a drab grey sky.

It began to rain as she reached the edge of Market Chipping. Sophie had not thought to bring an umbrella. She was not even sure they had one at the castle. “Maybe the cloak is spelled to keep out water,” Sophie said to herself, hobbling toward Market Square. It was not.

She reached Cesari’s with soaked shoulders and a wet dress-front. In front of the display window, warmly lit and all blurry with rain, she stopped. All she needed to do was catch a glimpse of Martha and see that she was alright. No one would recognise her, she reminded herself.

The door was thrown open by a girl with a Cesari’s apron and a cloud of brown hair, who looked to be a few years older than Martha. “Come in!” She took Sophie’s elbow firmly, pulling her from her thoughts and into the pastry shop. “Do you want me to take your cloak? It’s soaked.”

“Ah,” said Sophie, as her enchanted cloak was taken and hung from a coat hook. “Thank you,” she muttered, hoping the girl had not noticed the change in her face and stature with the disappearance of her disguise.

“Here, sit by the counter,” said the girl kindly. “It’s warmer near the kitchens. We’re not busy today, so you can stay as long as you need.”

Sophie looked around furtively. Though the light that came through the windows was grey and watery, candles on the tables and counters cast a cheerful glow over the pastry shop. It was not nearly as full today as last time she had come. Perhaps the weather had kept people away. Of the handful of customers present, who seemed content to wait out the rain with pastries and quiet chatter, she recognized a few; none spared her a second glance. There was a comfort in being unknown, and a sadness. Martha was nowhere to be seen. She might not even work today. Sophie had a wretched feeling this was probably for the best.

“Excuse me,” she said to the brown-haired girl. “Do you know an apprentice named M—Lettie?”

“Oh, yes, Lettie! Just a minute,” said the girl, and then, before Sophie could stop her, turned and shouted, “Lettie! There’s a woman here to see you!”

Sophie, who had only intended to ask her how Martha had been, almost took her soaking cloak and fled right then. Her stomach was in knots. The thought seized her that she could not bear for Martha to see her and not know who she was.

But it was too late to slither out. “One minute!” called a familiar voice from the back room. Sophie fought to keep the misery from her expression as Martha came to the counter.

It was like looking at Martha and Lettie at once, the switching spell slipping half-off like a hand-me-down dress—Lettie’s dark curls turning light at the ends, Martha’s round cheeks and Lettie’s stubborn eyebrows, features Sophie knew like her own. She smiled, a little confused, and asked, “What can I do for you, auntie?”

“Nothing,” croaked Sophie. “I didn’t mean to bother you.”

Martha’s brow wrinkled. She hesitated, disbelieving, then asked, “Sophie? Is that you?”

Warmth rushed through Sophie. She nodded, unable to speak around the lump in her throat. Martha pulled up her skirts in one floury fist and leapt over the counter to wrap Sophie in an embrace so fierce it almost knocked her backwards. Sophie, though she had never been one for crying, felt wetness on her cheek as she squeezed her sister. Martha, who had always been one for crying, wept into Sophie’s hair. She was warm and flour-covered and smelled of vanilla. “I can’t believe it’s you. Oh, Sophie,” she said, pulling away to look at her with fervent concern. “You’re so short.”

Sophie laughed in the damp way one does after tears. It was true; she was hunched in old age. “Well, you’re too tall,” she said.

“It’s Lettie’s height,” Martha sighed. “It won’t last. Every passing week, it gets harder to reach the top shelves.” She wiped her nose, then finally noticed the curious stares they were drawing. “Follow me,” she said, leading Sophie back to a room with rows of cooling racks and a table covered in lumps of dough. Martha only disentangled her arm from Sophie’s to fetch a three-legged stool and pat a white flour handprint onto the seat. “Here,” she said.

Sophie sat, her knees creaking, and dried her face on her sleeve. “I’ve missed you,” she said. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed  _ you,”  _ Martha said. “Where have you been? What happened to you?”

The curse rose like a lump in Sophie’s throat. “I’m old,” she managed.

Martha was quick to guess what she could not say, thankfully. “Is it magic? Some sort of curse?” Sophie nodded. “I suppose that’s why no one had seen you! Mother’s asked for you all over Market Chipping.”

“How is she?” Sophie asked. “I hope she didn’t worry too much.”

“Of course she worried,” Martha said. “We all did! She came to Cesari’s and we had a terrible row. I thought you had run away because she worked you too hard, and I told her so. She’s frightfully sorry. She’s selling the hat shop, you know.”

“She’s what?” Sophie thought she must have misheard.

Martha rocked back on her heels, hands folded over her stomach and thumbs a-whirl. “Selling the shop. The stock’s all gone, and the building’s next. She’s going to live with her new husband, Mr. Sacheverell Smith, in his grand house on the hill.”

“Fanny’s remarried!” said Sophie, quite at a loss. It seemed that everything was changing so fast.

“And happy,” said Martha, with a touch of wistfulness. “But she’ll be so pleased to hear that you’re back. You must tell me how you got cursed.” Her expression turned fierce. “Was it Wizard Howl?”

“No, not him,” said Sophie.

“The Witch of the Waste?” Martha asked. Sophie gave a quick nod. “Oh, Sophie,” Martha said. She searched the cooling racks and returned with a raspberry scone, which she offered to Sophie, and a raisin bun, which she kept for herself. “Lettie was convinced that Horrible Howl had something to do with your disappearance. She’s been talking to him,” she said, furrowing Lettie’s dark eyebrows as she picked the raisins from her bun.

“I heard they’re courting,” Sophie said disapprovingly, her mouth full of scone.

“I hope not!” said Martha. “The King has wanted posters up for him everywhere these days. He’s up to no good, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” said Sophie.

_ “Sophie.” _

“Yes?” said Sophie innocently.

“What do you mean saying  _ I know _ like that? And don’t say nothing, I won’t believe you.”

Sophie remembered now that Martha could be frightfully stubborn. She put out a hand, into which Martha deposited her unwanted raisins, and tossed them into her mouth, one sticky finger raised. Martha chewed her bun impatiently. Once Sophie had swallowed, she said, “First, remember that you and Lettie magically swapped places without telling me, so you are in no position to judge me.”

“Noted,” said Martha, narrow-eyed.

“I’ve been living in Howl’s castle,” Sophie said.

Martha’s mouth fell open, affording Sophie a view of raisin-free mush. “Sophie!” she squawked.

“Stop saying my name like that,” Sophie said.

“I will say your name however I please,” said Martha indignantly. “You’re living with  _ hearteater Howl?” _

“He doesn’t really eat hearts, you know.”

“Actually, I didn’t know, because I’ve never lived with him!” said Martha, exasperated. “And stop chortling!” Sophie hid her mouth as Martha swept a handful of flour from the table and threw it over her. She could not help her laughter. Never had she been the wild sister before, and it was more fun than she expected. It had been months since she felt so young.

“Stop, stop,” she said, arm raised as a shield against further floury attacks. “I’m only his cleaning lady. You won’t believe the mess his castle had gotten to.”

“I can’t believe it,” said Martha, and shook her head. “How long have you been there?”

“Ever since I left,” Sophie said.

Martha brightened. “Did you meet a boy named Michael Fisher?”

Sophie had been so caught up in the excitement of seeing her sister that she had forgotten why she came. She wanted to do this delicately, but could not see how. “Yes,” she said.

“Has he been busy lately?” Martha asked. She turned toward the table and busied herself with a lump of dough. Under streaks of flour, her neck was faintly pink. “I haven’t seen him in a few weeks.”

“He had to move to Kingsbury,” Sophie said. “He’s studying with Howl’s old tutor.”

“Oh,” said Martha. “He should have sent a letter. I was starting to worry that something had happened to him. Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“He hasn’t said,” said Sophie evasively.

“Well, when you next see him, tell him to send word,” Martha said. Her rolling pin clicked as she energetically rolled out dough. Sophie caught a flutter in her tone.

“I will,” Sophie said. She wanted, badly, to tell Martha all that had happened to Michael in the last few weeks: he had caught a star, he had fought the Witch of the Waste, he had been cursed. But she was not sure that it was her business to say, and she was even less sure that it would comfort Martha to hear. So she just motioned to the lumps of dough. “Can I help with that?”

“Have you learned to use a rolling pin since I left home?” Martha asked. Sophie made a face at her, and Martha smiled. “Sorry. Here, I think there’s a knife at your end of the table. Once I’ve rolled them out, you can cut it like so.” She traced a triangular shape across the dough with her little finger. Sophie found the knife and did as Martha described. After a minute, Martha snorted softly.

“What?” Sophie said. “Am I doing it wrong?”

“I can’t  _ believe _ you’ve been living with Horrible Howl this whole time,” said Martha. She looked at Sophie and the corners of her pink mouth twitched. Another second and she was laughing in earnest, warm and loud and wonderfully familiar. Sophie’s whole body relaxed at the sound. “You never could do anything by halves! I can’t wait to see Mother’s expression when she finds out. You have to tell me everything,” she said eagerly. “What’s Wizard Howl like? Is he frightening?”

“Hardly!” said Sophie. “He’s vain and careless and hysterical, but not frightening. I think he might be the biggest coward in Ingary. He hates to get angry and he’ll do anything to slither out of a fight, or a day’s honest work. He saves money like a sieve saves water. And he’s—well, he’s so vain.”

“You already said that,” Martha pointed out.

“It bears repeating,” Sophie said feelingly. “You would understand if you’d met him.”

“I hope I never do!” Martha said. “He sounds awful. I’m so glad you got away.” She put down her rolling pin and pushed a loose curl from her face with her wrist. “I have tomorrow off and I can walk you up to Mother’s new home in the morning. I’ll borrow some blankets and make a bed for you, Anna will lend me hers if I ask. Mrs. Cesari will understand.”

Sophie was confused. “It’s alright, I’ll just sleep at the castle.”

Martha’s face fell. “You’re going back?”

“Of course,” said Sophie, a little taken back.

“Why?”

“I live there.”

“But you don’t have to,” Martha said earnestly. “You don’t have to work anywhere you’re unhappy. If you don’t want to live with Mother, I’m sure Mrs. Fairfax would let you stay with her, or someone else.”

Sophie could not say why Martha’s words flustered her so. She had considered leaving the castle many times—but not like  _ this. _ Not this sort of unceremonious disappearance. What would Calcifer think if he brought the castle round to Market Chipping like she asked, and she never returned? But then, why should she care what Calcifer thought? “I can’t leave yet,” she said. “I have to have my curse taken off.”

“Lettie can take it off,” Martha said. “She’s learning magic so quickly. Mrs. Fairfax says she might be as powerful as the Witch of the Waste one day.”

“But I made a deal with one of Howl’s helpers,” Sophie said.

Martha actually stamped her foot. Her distress would have been comical if Sophie were in a laughing mood. “But you aren’t happy there! It’s the hat shop all over again. Are you even being paid?”

“How do you know I’m not happy?” Sophie demanded, putting down the knife.

“You were just telling me how Wizard Howl was so vain and cowardly and lazy—”

“But that’s just  _ Howl,” _ Sophie said. “And I’ve been making the most frightful nuisance of myself, too.”

“Sophie Hatter.” Martha put floury fists on her hips. “Have you fallen in love with Wizard Howl?”

Sophie was almost knocked back by surprise. The idea was absurd. “No, I have not,” she sputtered. Absurd, and utterly out of the question. “Martha, look at me. He thinks I’m a ninety-year-old woman.”

“That’s not relevant. I asked if  _ you  _ were in love with  _ him,”  _ said Martha stubbornly.

“Absolutely not!” said Sophie. In the belligerent silence that followed, Sophie heard that the rain had ceased. She pressed her lips together. Martha clearly was not going to be the reasonable one in this situation. “Like I said, I have a plan to break the curse, and then I’ll come back to Market Chipping. It might only be another month.”

“Do you promise you’ll come back?” Martha asked.

“I promise,” Sophie said. “It’ll be just like before.”

“No, it won’t be,” said Martha, then sighed. “But I suppose it never was going to be. Can I hug you again?” Sophie spread her arms and Martha hugged her, resting her chin on Sophie’s head. “You really do have old woman hair. It’s so stiff.”

Sophie murmured an acknowledgement. She tried to memorize the warmth of her sister’s arms around her. Then, reluctantly, she disentangled herself. “I’d better leave before it starts raining again. Tell Fanny and Lettie that I love them, and I’ll see them when I can.”

“I will. Tell Michael to write,” said Martha, “and tell Howl to piss off.”

_ “Martha,” _ laughed Sophie.

“Ha! If I ever meet him I’ll say worse,” Martha said. Sophie didn’t doubt it. “Here, I’ll get you some pastries to take with you.” She fetched a box and loaded it with scones and rolls and buns and biscuits, Sophie tucked it under one arm and her sodden cloak under the other, and Martha got the door. As Sophie made her way down the empty street, under a heavy grey sky, Martha shouted after her, “Don’t fall in love with Wizard Howl!”

Sophie turned around to stick out her tongue before continuing to hobble toward the dark shape of the castle, looming over the housetops at the edge of town. Calcifer was true to his word. The visit to Martha had done her good, although it had not gone at all as she expected. She should have known Martha would recognize her, even beneath the curse—she knew her too well. In every way but one, it seemed.

Sophie could not be in love with Howl. First, he was quite wicked. Second, she was quite old. And third, it would be terribly inconvenient. Surely Martha had been joking. It was her lot, as a younger sister, to be a pest, just as it was Sophie’s lot to have the worst of luck. And today, her bad luck was to have rain begin to fall again, fast and hard, just as she neared the castle.

“Bother you, then!” she cried, shaking her fist at the sky. She could hear the bump and rumble of the castle, and dimly make out its shape. The path squished to mud beneath her feet as she hobbled faster. “Stop!” she shouted, and the castle ground to a halt. Sophie circled the walls, getting more wet by the second, until she reached the entrance.

There was a folded piece of parchment tacked to the door, spattered with rain, which she pulled loose and stumbled inside, hoping fervently that Howl was not home.

“What on earth happened?” said Calcifer as she burst in. Howl was nowhere to be seen. “You took so long I thought you’d gotten lost. And you look half-drowned.”

“When will Howl be back?” Sophie demanded, propping her walking stick by the fire. She needed to hide the evidence of her errand.

“Soon, I think,” Calcifer said. He watched eagerly as Sophie rushed back and forth. “Did your sister throw a bucket of water over you?”

“It’s raining in Market Chipping,” Sophie said. She dropped the box of pastries and folded parchment on the table and ran to the bathroom, hastily wringing the cloak over the tub, then hanging the still-dripping cloak in the closet. The floor was tracked with muddy footprints. Sophie wrapped a towel around her wet shoulders and threw another down on the floor, dragging it after her as she rushed back to the table. She crammed another raspberry scone in her mouth (they were her favorite, as Martha knew) and then hid the box beneath a stack of linens.

“Howl’s at the door,” Calcifer called.

Sophie abandoned all thoughts of collecting herself. She snatched the rain-spattered parchment from the table just as the knob turned so the blue blob was down. Sophie seized the doorknob and twisted it the other way, forcing it to red-down, and flew out into Kingsbury.

Dripping wet, with a towel around her shoulders and an entire scone in her mouth, Sophie looked wildly from side to side. A sunny afternoon was fading into a clear summer evening over Kingsbury. Her attire drew an odd look from a well-dressed couple walking past. Spotting a cobbler’s shop down the street, she sloshed over to it in a hurry and went in.

The cobbler’s apprentice looked up, alarmed. “Can I help you, auntie?”

Sophie waved one hand, doing her best to appear dignified even as she rushed to chew and swallow the scone. “No, no,” she managed at last. “But thank you. You seem like a very well-mannered child.” She sat on the window-sill, her damp back to the sun-warm glass, and unfolded the parchment officially. The apprentice looked like she wanted to object, but Sophie did not notice. The parchment was a letter from Mrs. Pentstemmon.

The front was rain-streaked, but she could make out several crossed out addresses in Kingsbury and Porthaven, and then, in dark letters,  _ 1 Moving Castle, Moors of Market Chipping. _ Howl owed the Market Chipping postman an apology. Sophie tore it open.

The letter was quite short: a wish for her health, a request for her presence at Mrs. Pentstemmon’s home in one week’s time, and a plea not to tell anyone of the errand. It was signed  _ Michael Fisher. _

Sophie’s breath caught in her chest. She was enormously relieved to hear from Michael, and see his careful handwriting, and even more relieved that he wanted to see her soon. But the tone of the letter was strangely urgent. She dearly hoped he wasn’t in any kind of trouble.

Nodding to the cobbler’s apprentice, she went to the door, then stopped at the sight of a red-bearded man traipsing down the street. She recognized the disguise cloak in an instant. Not him! Not  _ now. _ Sophie ducked behind a shelf.

“Is everything alright?” asked the cobbler’s apprentice peevishly.

“Shhh,” said Sophie. Howl turned the corner and disappeared from sight. The bell over the shop door tinkled as she scurried out of the shop and back to the castle, pulling down two wanted posters as she passed them. She nearly missed the door. The concealment spells Howl and Michael had set up were very good. Sophie passed the castle three times, growing more and more bothered, before she spotted the familiar doorstep and brass knob.

“What on earth is wrong?” Calcifer demanded as she burst in, skating on puddled water.

And the answer was  _ everything. _ The answer was  _ rain and Martha and letters and Michael and curses and Howl and me.  _ But Sophie could not say any of that, so she only told him, “They’re selling the hat shop,” and hid the invitation to Mrs. Pentstemmon’s under her bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i LOVE the idea of howl singing "Somebody to Love" (by Queen, of course) in the bath because i absolutely cherish the image of him putting his whole heart into 'i work hard, every day of my life/i work til i ache in my bones--' and everyone outside of the bathroom, who can hear him perfectly well, is like [side-eye]
> 
> dear commenters, i love you! your words make me so happy :)  
> (also if you see me projecting missing my siblings onto sophie no you don't <3)


	8. In which curses once again prove bothersome

A week later, Sophie was a bundle of nerves as she scrambled eggs. The breakfast embargo was officially over; Howl had surreptitiously sold a few spells, and Sophie had visited the Porthaven market twice with the money, and the cupboards were full once more. This only occurred after Sophie discovered Howl eating a raspberry scone out of the box from Cesari’s, which she had hidden under the jigsaw man’s bed in Michael’s room. There was a great quarrel, during which Howl said he didn’t know they were only hers and Sophie asked why she would have hidden them otherwise, and he said that for all he knew they didn’t keep food in the cupboard anymore, it was so bare, and she said they wouldn’t have any food until he made some money, and he pointed out that it wasn’t exactly easy doing business when you were wanted in every city in the kingdom and where had she even gotten the money to go to Cesari’s? But it was all sorted now.

Sophie opened the broom closet. There was only one cloak: the one that turned the wearer into a horse. She closed the door, then reopened it, frowning, like they might have reappeared. Nothing. “Howl!” she shouted. “What happened to the cloaks?”

“I sold them,” he called from his room. “Where’s the poetry book?”

“You  _ sold _ them? Whatever for?”

“For money,” he said, tromping down the stairs and digging through the drifts of books and papers on the shelves in a frenzied way. Sophie craned her neck to see what he was doing.

“And what did you do with the money?” She hadn’t seen so much as a glint of copper.

“I spent it. Calcifer, did she hide the poetry anthology?” he called over his shoulder. “It’s due back to the library today.”

“It’s between the skull and the jam jar to stop them from clattering,” Sophie said. There was no need to hide his things when he put them in a different place every time. “What did you spend the money  _ on?” _

Howl pulled the book free, and then took the skull in his hand, frowning at it. “I wonder if he knows our friend upstairs.”

“You think the skull belongs to the headless man?” Calcifer asked. “I’m not sure. Something seems off.”

“No, you’re right,” Howl said. He sighed, replacing the skull on the shelf and stuffing some important-looking papers between it and the jam jar. “I should probably take back the quilting book you stole, too.”

“I’m not done with it,” she said.

He shrugged. “Alright.” Tucking the poetry book under his arm, he spun the knob by the door black-blob-down and swept out. Sophie went back to the closet and opened it a third time. There was still only one cloak. She pulled it out and shook it.

“I can’t imagine what possessed him to sell the cloaks. Or to leave this one,” she said. “I can’t go to Mrs. Pentstemmon’s disguised as a  _ horse.” _

Calcifer laughed raspily. “Maybe no one wanted to buy that one.”

Sophie glared at him. She was nervous enough as it was—about navigating Kingsbury, about visiting the great witch, about seeing Michael again—and now she had no disguise. “What did Howl spend all that money on, anyway?” Five enchanted cloaks, as finely made as they were and sold by a well-known wizard, could fetch a small fortune—if Howl had the sense to ask for it, which wasn’t a sure thing.

“I can’t tell you,” Calcifer said.

Sophie glowered at him. “That’s not fair, I told you about the invitation.”

“Only after I pestered,” said Calcifer, “and after swearing me to secrecy. And besides, if I told you Howl’s secrets, how could you trust me to keep yours?”

“Oh, bother you,” she said. She hung the cloak back up and wrapped her shawl around her shoulders. The shawl had been through a lot in the last few months, and had grown bedraggled, but it was too late to fix that now. Walking stick in one hand and invitation in the other, Sophie set off to Mrs. Pentstemmon’s.

She was let into Mrs. Pentstemmon’s house by a dour doorman. He blew his drooping hat-feather from his face and pointed into the dark interior. “Down the hall, up the stairs, to the left. Go past the centaur bust and in at the second door on the right. The lady’s waiting in the blue drawing room.” All this was said with a cigar in his fingers and smoke dribbling between his teeth.

“Thank you,” said Sophie, who had already forgotten half of his directions. Hopefully someone inside could point her the right way.

But all she found inside was sheet-covered furniture in long, quiet halls. Sophie climbed the stairs and turned about. There was no bust to be seen, centaur or other. Pausing to catch her breath, she loosened her shawl, and several dozen wanted posters of Howl spilled out, all crumpled and sticking together. She had pulled them down on the way over and intended to destroy them before meeting the great lady—so she should probably find a fire first, and then a servant who could direct her to the blue drawing room.

Instead, as she stumped down the corridor, she heard someone singing softly behind a half-open door. She knew the tune before she could make out any words: Calcifer’s little saucepan song. Through the door she saw a bed with a canopy, tapestried walls, and Michael sprawled beside Lucine’s brazier.

“Surely a boy as old as you can make up his own bed,” Sophie said.

“Sophie!” he cried, nearly overturning the brazier in his rush to stand. “You came!”

“Of course,” she scoffed. “I got your letter.” She threw the sheaf of wanted posters into Lucine’s flames. The fire demon guttered and sparked.

“I don’t want those,” he said.

“Nor do I,” said Sophie unsympathetically.

Michael’s hands fluttered like he thought maybe he should shake her hand or offer to take her walking stick. “Have you talked to Mrs. Pentstemmon?”

“Not yet,” said Sophie, turning to him. “Oh, Michael! Your  _ hair.” _

He wore a long new purple jacket, embroidered with runes and many-pointed stars, which gave him a decidedly wizardish air. He looked healthy, if a little tired. At his temples, his hair was streaked with white. “The fight with the Witch was a bigger strain than I realized,” he said, pulling at it self-consciously.

That was another line of the curse fulfilled. How many were left? “Is that why you invited me?” she asked.

“No,” said Michael. “It’s—it’s something else. Let’s find Mrs. Pentstemmon. She’ll explain.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand what I’m meant to do,” Sophie said. If she had been less overwhelmed by the great sorceress, she would have had a few more choice words to say. Mrs. Pentstemmon had not danced around the reason for Sophie’s summons. Michael made an unwise contract with a fire demon and it threatened to consume him. She expected Sophie to help break it.  _ Not this again, _ Sophie thought hopelessly. She was accumulating a veritable laundry list of contracts and curses that needed breaking. “Michael, I thought you said Lucine was good!”

“There’s no such thing as a good fire demon,” said Mrs. Pentstemmon. Her hands, gloved with gold-mesh mittens, glittered like dragon claws in the firelight. “Nor an evil fire demon. Human morality means nothing to them. Why would it? They belong to the unimaginable grandeur of the sky, not the petty concerns of the earth. In time, the fire demon’s magic will burn right through any magician bound to them.”

Sophie wanted to point out that Calcifer seemed to care quite a bit about petty concerns of the earth, but Michael looked so distressed that she did not want to prolong the discussion unnecessarily. “But you don’t know what the contract is, and Michael can’t say.”

“Regrettably,” she said. “But I have no doubt you are up to the task.”

Sophie surreptitiously wiped sweat from her neck. The late summer day, combined with the fire that roared by Mrs. Pentstemmon’s embroidered armchair, made the room oppressively warm. It was unclear from whom she had gained such a glowing opinion of Sophie’s skills. But she could not refuse Michael’s look of earnest entreaty, so she reluctantly cast her thoughts about. “Calcifer mentioned a contract, too,” she said.

“Do you want me to get you a pen and paper, to take notes?” Michael offered.

Sophie waved her hand. That would not help. “You can’t tell me anything about the contract?” He shook his head and she gave a grump of frustration. Spells like these were dreadfully inconvenient. “Well, give any signs you can.” Her joints creaked as she began to pace. “The contract requires the human to give the demon something only humans have, I know that much.” Michael nodded encouragingly. What did only humans have? She racked her brain for a suitable bribe for a demon. “Money? A house? Your firstborn child?” Michael made a face. “I suppose you’ve never had a child. Your future firstborn? Michael, are you alright?”

His hand was over his mouth. “I feel nauseous,” he said.

“Step out before you’re sick,” Mrs. Pentstemmon commanded. Michael rushed out, clutching his gut. She cast a knowing look at Sophie. “A sight stronger than the secrecy clause of your own curse, I’m afraid.”

Sophie thought she might have misheard. “My what?”

She smiled. “Mrs. Hatter, please. We are both women of magic; there is no need to continue this charade with me. In fact, I had hoped to ask you regarding Michael’s other magical misfortune, the reason he came to live with me. Have you heard any more of the Witch of the Waste’s fire demon?”

“No,” said Sophie, thoroughly bewildered.

Mrs. Pentstemmon smiled. “Very good. Then I think he’s safe from that little unpleasantness. I have spent years enchanting this home against dark forces. And besides, the demon cannot touch him until the curse is fulfilled. Please, proceed with your monologue.”

“I don’t remember what I was saying,” said Sophie honestly. “Do you have a library? Perhaps I could find something of use there.”

The dangling beads on the sorceress’s headpiece swayed as she nodded. “If you think so. Fetch Michael and he can show you the way.”

Sophie found him, bent over on the edge of a tasselled couch in the hall, and explained the errand. Michael’s voice sounded a little hoarse. “I’m sorry I can’t be more help,” he said. “Mrs. Pentstemmon tried to take off the bit where I couldn’t talk about it but I think that just made it worse.”

“Nasty, sticky sort of contract, isn’t it?” grumbled Sophie. She was tired of magic that kept people from speaking plainly. Everything would be simpler if people could just  _ say _ what they knew. No more curses, or contracts, or confusion, or cowardly sideways little ways of saying things.

They passed through carved wooden doors. Sophie hoped this would go better than their last visit to a library. Mrs. Pentstemmon’s library was certainly grander than the one in Howl’s world. She approved of the stained glass windows. They pored over a catalogue that listed the books, and Sophie was even more pleased to find that Mrs. Pentstemmon seemed to keep her library in good order. “Which section do you think would be most likely to have information about fire demons?” she asked. “Perhaps Devils & Daemonology. Check the second shelf through the door on the left.”

She and Michael trooped through the door, located the second shelf, and found it was empty but for a layer of grey powder. Heart sinking, she ran her finger through it. Ash.

“What happened to the books?” rasped Michael.

“Burned, I suspect,” Sophie said grimly.

“How? I’m sure Mrs. Pentstemmon doesn’t allow fires in the library—”

Sophie thought like the detective in the mystery Howl had read aloud. If the fire was accidental, surely the shelf itself would be damaged, or books in other sections. Which meant someone, or something, had burned these books specifically. “Has Lucine been to the library?”

“No, he stays in his brazier,” he said, then understood. “Sophie, he wouldn’t—”

“I know you trust him,” Sophie said hurriedly. “It just seems strange that the only books that might have information on the contract are gone.” He looked affronted. “Michael, I’m doing my best,” she said. “But I can’t figure this out. You might have been better off inviting Howl.”

“It’s not that I trust Lucine,” said Michael, then sighed. “I feel sorry for him. He used to know all the stars in the sky and now he’s all alone here. He didn’t mean to cause trouble. He was—he was scared.” He rubbed his collarbone unhappily.

Wondering at his sympathy, Sophie patted his arm. “Either way, it doesn’t look like we’ll find answers here. Something’s made sure of that.”

Mrs. Pentstemmon’s reaction to the news of the burned books was restrained to a sharp jut of her eyebrow. “If the work of others is no use, you must rely on your own wit. Attempt to reason it out. Mrs. Hatter, please, sit.”

Sophie lowered herself gladly onto the armchair opposite the sorceress’s. The heat of the fire softened her tired joints. She had  _ been  _ there when Michael met Lucine. If only she had not been so distracted with that sticking boot. That same night, Michael had made Lucine his first brazier—and Howl and Calcifer had made the castle together, hadn’t they? “Is it a home? A place to live? A hearth?” That felt wrong. The contract should cost something dangerous. Surely there was no harm in giving a lost thing a home. Mrs. Pentstemmon’s gaze was piercing. Sophie rubbed her eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t remember enough of that night. If only there were a way to go back and see it again.”

The sorceress stirred, beads of her headpiece glinting in the firelight. “Perhaps you could,” she mused. Sophie’s heart leapt. “It is possible to visit the past. Michael could take you back and try to get close enough to hear the contract as it is made.”

“Is it dangerous?” Sophie asked.

She smiled enigmatically. “Mrs. Hatter, all magic is dangerous.”

“Remember to only look and listen,” Mrs. Pentstemmon said. She had required the help of Michael and her page boy to move from her armchair into a wheeled chair so she could accompany her guests to a room she called the spellroom. If she were in a different house Sophie would have guessed it was a particularly dreary ballroom. The air was shadowy and cool; the roof was vaulted and multiplied every word spoken. “Your past selves will not see or hear you, but they may notice if you work magic—which you mustn’t do.”

_ Mustn’t do, mustn’t do, _ echoed the walls. An assortment of sheet-covered chairs and tarnished candelabras had been pushed to the edges of the room. Michael came in, balancing Lucine over his head. A puff of ash drifted out of the brazier as Michael set it down. Then he set to work drawing a wide circle on the grey stone floor, adding and erasing notations per Mrs. Pentstemmon’s instructions. It was pleasant to watch Michael work a spell again; Sophie smiled to see him jumping about with chalk on his fingers and folded charts in his back pocket.

While Mrs. Pentstemmon explained the spell to him in low tones, Sophie hobbled over to Lucine with a candle to light the candelabras. She looked down narrowly at the fire demon. “Don’t muddle this for us,” she whispered. “It’s for your good, too.” Lucine’s dejected sigh blew curls of half-burned paper from the brazier.

When Mrs. Pentstemmon asked “Mrs. Hatter, are you ready?” she hobbled to the middle of the circle and took Michael’s outstretched hand.

“Are you sure about this?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Michael.

“Remember to enunciate,” called Mrs. Pentstemmon. Michael said a sentence of thistly, piercing words, and the room fell apart like a mosaic.

They plummeted through blackness and immense pressure. The only thing Sophie could feel was Michael’s fingers, squeezing hers tight enough to cut off circulation. Sophie could not breathe. She did not know if this was from fear or if there was no air there. But just when she felt about to burst, the world reformed around them.

Sophie stood in the marshes on a very quiet night. Or perhaps  _ over _ the marshes would be more accurate; her feet hovered above the ground like smoke. The only sources of light were the stars glittering overhead. “Is this the right place?” she whispered to Michael.

“I think so,” he whispered back. “Oh! There!”

In the distance, there was a flash of light, and a star shook loose from the sky, streaking down toward the marsh. Sophie and Michael began to run. But they were too far away, and this time they had no seven-league boots.

“I see us!” Michael said. “I’m running like mad—I’ve taken off the seven-league boot—there!”

No matter how she strained, Sophie couldn’t see anything. Light flared, and her heart sank. “We missed it.” And the world fell apart like a mosaic around them.

They were in Mrs. Pentstemmon’s grand spellroom once more. “Did you hear the contract?” she asked keenly.

“We were too far away,” Michael said.

The corners of Mrs. Pentstemmon’s lips curved down. “It’s a tricky spell to get on your first try,” she said.

“I think I can get closer if we try again,” Michael said. “Sophie, are you alright?”

She pressed her hand to her throbbing chest. “I’m fine. Do it again.”

Michael spoke the spell, and they dropped through darkness and stopped hard inches above the marsh. Sophie had hardly caught her breath when two dark figures whirred past them, making a breeze that flattened the grass where they ran. Michael and Sophie ran after the shadows, blowing through past-Sophie as she stopped and began pulling furiously at her boot. “Get off, you stubborn thing,” she grunted at the seven-league boot. Michael dragged Sophie forward, toward past-Michael as he closed his hands around Lucine, too fast. Sophie tripped. She righted herself just as Lucine flared.

They were in Mrs. Pentstemmon’s parlor again. “I didn’t mean to pull you so fast,” Michael said. “I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sophie said. “We’ll try it again.”

“I’ll get us closer,” Michael vowed.

But the third time, he muffed the words, and the marsh was distorted, like they were looking through a broken window, big dark cracks lining the sky and water. The next time, the past was entirely silent, as though Sophie’s ears had been stuffed with wax.

The fifth time, she was close enough to hear Michael softly say, “I suppose you need it more than I do,” and then the past burst apart with particular force.

Sophie’s breathing was ragged. She had run quite a ways now. “What happened? Why did we come back early?”

“I don’t know!” Michael said, and heaved a deep breath to repeat the spell.

Sophie lost track of how many times they fell back to that night. If it had been real, she would have been soaked and covered with mud from all her mad running and frequent tripping. Her feet ached anyway. Michael’s hand was damp with sweat. No matter how he tried, they could not get it right; they were too far, or too slow, or too late. Finally, he refused to go back.

“There must be something we’re missing,” he said, blinking glassy eyes. “There’s no point in you exhausting yourself until we figure out what’s going wrong.”

“Everything I do goes wrong,” Sophie said. She collapsed onto the dusty sheet that covered the nearest chair, strands of grey hair tumbling past her ears. “I was never meant to break curses or fight fire demons! I’m the oldest daughter of an ordinary hatmaker.”

“I’m just a fisherman’s orphan,” he returned, dropping to the ground and mopping his forehead with his sleeve. “This isn’t your bad luck. I’m the one that doesn’t recognize curses and makes deals with fire demons and can’t even get this  _ one _ stupid spell right.” Lucine blew sparks at his tone.

“Michael, this isn’t your fault,” Sophie said, dragging herself upright.  _ The Witch of the Waste cursed me first, _ she wanted to tell him.

“Then whose is it?” he demanded.

“Mine!” she insisted.

“No, it’s not!” He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. Then, with a frown, he drew a chart from his pocket and began making calculations on the back. Sophie’s mind circled the same well-worn tracks.  _ What am I missing? What am I missing? _

A shred of paper by the brazier caught her eye. It was smaller than her thumb, but the pattern of corncob hair was unmistakable. The corner of her mouth quirked up.

“Howl,” she said.

Michael sighed. “It’s not his fault, either.”

“No, that’s not what I meant.” Although he had caused quite a bit of trouble. But no more than her or Michael. “Maybe—maybe it’s your contract interfering with the spell. You’re not allowed to show me the deal  _ you _ made. But you can show me Howl’s. He made the same kind of contract as you did, didn’t he?”

She jumped at the sound of Mrs. Pentstemmon’s voice. The imposing old woman had been so quiet she almost forgot she was there. “You wouldn’t be able to do it here. You would need his fire demon.”

“Then we’ll go back to the castle,” Sophie said.

“I don’t think Howl would like that,” said Michael.

“He’s not even there,” Sophie encouraged. “He’s in his world today. You wouldn’t have to see him if you don’t want to.”

Michael looked so forlorn for a moment that Sophie would have dragged him into a hug if he were within arm’s reach, but before she could even stand all the way he had rearranged his expression into determination. “Then we had better go quick.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do  _ quick,” _ Mrs. Pentstemmon said wryly. “I’m not as hale as Mrs. Hatter—unless you would like to push my wheelchair, Michael.”

“I can do that,” he said, “if you can carry Lucine on your lap.”

Mrs. Pentstemmon looked alarmed. She seemed to harbor a special dislike for the fire demon. “I can carry Lucine,” Sophie offered.

“Aren’t you tired?” Michael asked.

“No,” she said, which was only a small lie. “I’ve had a chance to catch my breath.” Mrs. Pentstemmon’s earlier words rattled through her brain, calling her a woman of magic and calling her curse a  _ charade. _ Did she think Sophie would intentionally give herself knees that ached so? But Mrs. Pentstemmon must know her craft. As Michael put aside the most volatile spell ingredients, Sophie felt around for the buzzing that accompanied Calcifer and Lucine’s magic, trying to pry up the corners of the curse the Witch had cast on her. Her efforts were fruitless. She grunted with annoyance. “Ease up a little, at least,” she muttered to the magic she could not find. “Let me breathe properly.”

She could not tell if it worked, but she hoisted Lucine’s brazier up and set off after Michael and Mrs. Pentstemmon anyway. When they emerged onto the street Sophie was surprised to find that the sky was darkening and the streetlamps of Kingsbury were lit. The visit had taken longer than she thought. She wondered how long Howl would be out, and glanced guiltily at Michael. It was hard going back without knowing how you would be received. And she was too far behind to reassure him; the brazier’s weight slowed her already slow pace. It was tricky getting a good grip on Lucine’s brazier. At first, she tried to prop against her hip, like she would with a basket of laundry, but the bowl was too big for that and she nearly caught her sleeve on fire. Then she balanced him on her head, like Michael had done earlier, which worked better, but made her neck hurt. Ash dusted down over her when she stumbled. She was sure if it were Calcifer she was carrying, he would have mocked her, and she was preemptively irritated.

Mrs. Pentstemmon’s chair clattered over the cobblestones. Thankfully, Michael knew the way home, even in the dark; he found the castle door as easily as if there had been no concealment spell at all. He took a deep breath. “Are you sure Howl isn’t home?” he asked.

By now, Sophie was carrying the brazier in front of her like a priestess with the holy flame, leaning back to keep her face from getting too hot. “Absolutely,” she said. She thought Michael must know half the things she claimed to be sure of were lies; even Lucine looked suspicious. Michael tested the door. It opened easily.

“Is that Michael?” Calcifer crackled. “And— _ oh.” _ Mrs. Pentstemmon rose stiffly from her chair, and Sophie hobbled in after, holding Lucine. Calcifer twisted, agitated. “What’s going on?”

Sophie set Lucine’s brazier on the workbench and then came to lean against the fireplace. “Michael needs your help to work a spell. It won’t take too long.”

“I don’t have to help him with anything,” Calcifer said. Michael’s face fell.

“Calcifer!” Sophie scolded. “If you won’t do it for Michael and me, do it for yourself—he’s trying to show me how to break a contract with a fire demon.”

Calcifer spit sparks but didn’t argue. His purple eyes flickered from Lucine to Mrs. Pentstemmon. Mrs. Pentstemmon refused to look at him. Sophie dragged aside the bench to give Michael space to redraw his circle. “Mrs. Hatter, would you fill a bucket of water?” Mrs. Pentstemmon said. “The amount of fire in this small room makes me nervous.”

Sophie complied. Howl had spoken of Mrs. Pentstemmon so warmly that she was surprised by the coldness with which she looked around the cluttered, cosy front room. Maybe it was no grand palace, but it was charming. With a pang, Sophie realized she would miss it terribly once her curse was broken.

It could be broken tonight. If this went well, she could break both contracts and be turned young before morning. She could go back to Martha the next day.

“Sophie, are you alright?” Michael asked.

“I have ash in my eye,” she said gruffly. “Are you ready?”

“I’m ready,” he said, and took her hand. She heard the prickling words of the spell and they plunged into the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the boy is back! the boy is back!!!!!


	9. In which a mess is made of things

They were in the marshes, again, on a very different night. The long grasses mixed with whistling reeds, and a claw-scratch crescent moon hung overhead, smeared with fast-moving clouds. Michael had cast the spell flawlessly; the scene was clear as crystal. The only thing missing was Howl. “I hope this is the right place,” Michael said.

“It is,” Sophie said, squeezing his hand. “I’m sure.” A splashing rose above the sound of the wind in the reeds, and Sophie turned to see Howl.

His hair was black and cropped short; he wore stiff blue pants and a capelet so pink it shone in the faint moonlight, but it was unmistakably him. Sophie recognized his gait. His head was tilted back to watch the stars.

One of them came unstuck and fell toward the earth. Howl let out a whoop. Sophie tensed, preparing to run. The star hurtled down, and past-Howl seemed to realize it was coming straight toward him. With an enthusiastic curse of the non-magical variety, he took off sprinting. He barrelled through Michael and Sophie like they were made of fog, and Sophie leapt into motion after him. The star streaked down, going from a speck to a pin-prick to a screaming white teardrop of flame.  _ There’s no way he can reach it before it hits the water, _ Sophie thought, but he dove, hands flung out, and plowed through the muddy sludge to catch it inches from the water.

“Wait for me,” Sophie begged, running to catch up. Howl sat up from the mud, star in his hands, and shook his head like a dog.

“Watch it,” squealed the star. “You’re all wet.”

There was Calcifer. And he was right, as usual. Howl had mud down his front, soaking his pants, smeared up his face and across his arms. “What are you?” he asked, awed.

“I was a star,” Calcifer said shrilly. “Now I’m nothing! A fire demon! An ember about to go out! Why didn’t you let me go out?”

Sophie was only a stone’s throw away. “Did you want me to?” Howl asked, indignant.

“No!” Calcifer’s magic fizzed over her, familiar but far wilder than it had ever been in the castle, clutching and needy.

“I felt sorry for you,” Howl said.

Calcifer flared. “You can help me. You have to be fast.”

Sophie reached them. Howl’s face was pale in Calcifer’s white light. He looked shockingly young—as young as Sophie truly was, maybe younger, features softer than she was used to. “What do you need?”

“Your heart,” said Calcifer.

Howl did not look surprised. “That’s a lot to ask, star.”

“But you knew I would ask if you caught me, didn’t you?” Calcifer asked slyly. Howl looked troubled. “Give me your heart, and I’ll share my magic with you.” Still, Howl hesitated. Calcifer was growing dimmer. He stretched and twisted, panic on his fiery face. “You’re cruel! It would have been easier to go out right away.”

“Alright!” Howl said. “It hasn’t done me much good, anyway,” he added. Despite the flash of his usual melodrama, his face was very pale. He pressed his hand to his chest—and drew out his heart, pulsing. “Take it.” Calcifer expanded, growing blindingly bright, and Sophie hid her eyes. When she looked again, young Howl was sitting in the mud, studying Calcifer with eyes turned glassy in Calcifer’s pale light. Howl’s chest rose and fell with quick breaths, but he no longer looked scared—only curious. “Take good care of it,” he said. He crawled out of the mud, careful to keep Calcifer out of the water, and wiped his muddy hands on his equally muddy shirt one at a time. “I guess we should be getting home.” Calcifer burned stronger. Already, his flames were flickering gold, more like fire than starlight. As they walked away, Sophie could hear Calcifer introducing himself.

The world crumbled and reformed into the castle. “I saw it,” Sophie said, clutching the side of the fireplace for support. “He gave Calcifer his heart.” She swung around to face the fire demon. “He gave you his heart? Am I the only person in this castle that has had a heart for the last month?” She laughed, disbelieving. That certainly explained some things!

“I’m glad you figured it out,” Mrs. Pentstemmon said. “Because I believe with that last journey Michael’s trip surpassed ten thousand days.”

Sophie’s triumph vanished and she blanched. The white hair, the past years—“The curse is complete,” she said. “Michael, you have to get back to Mrs. Pentstemmon’s before the Witch’s fire demon finds you.”

“I’m afraid it’s a little late for that,” said Mrs. Pentstemmon, smiling. Except she did not look like Mrs. Pentstemmon anymore—her eyes shone, and her wrinkled skin and beaded headpiece blurred like flames. “And I think it would be more fair to call her Angorian’s human; she lost control of me long ago.”

Sophie had lost hold of Michael’s hand in the past and now he was across the room, staring at the fire demon, Angorian, with horror. He looked faint. As nasty of a shock as this was for Sophie, it must be far worse for him—but he needed to keep his head or they were lost for certain. She needed to buy him time. “What happened to Mrs. Pentstemmon?” she demanded.

“The Witch and I killed her weeks ago,” said Angorian with a laugh. “We were looking for Howl. She said  _ over my dead body _ and we took her at her word. Of course, we didn’t know then that the curse had caught the wrong person.” She tsked. “You two have caused me terrible trouble. Now, Mrs. Hatter, if you would step away from the fireplace.”

That was when Howl opened the door with a stack of books under his arms. “Sophie—” he said, and then took in the sight before him: Michael panicking in the corner, Lucine spitting sparks on the workbench, and Pentstemmon-Angorian advancing on Sophie, who stood with arms spread in front of Calcifer. Sophie had never been so relieved to see him. He dropped the books and leapt forward. Michael took advantage of Angorian’s distraction to shout some spell, and the air grew thick with thunder, but the fire demon ducked, triple shadows flying across the walls as she moved. The  _ whoosh _ of magic sent everything in the room shivering. Sophie remembered Calcifer’s comment about living in a tuning fork. There were  _ far  _ too many fire demons in this house.

“The curse came true,” Sophie shouted to Howl, by way of explanation, as his eyes darted across the room.

“She knows how to break the contract!” Calcifer said.

“Watch out,” Lucine squealed. Angorian lunged for the fireplace without a trace of her former stiffness, but Howl was in front of her, grabbing the frying pan from the table and swinging it like a club. Sparks flew when it hit her. Reeling from the blow, she changed directions, and Sophie shouted “Doors!” and scrambled to block the front door. But Angorian went instead for Lucine’s brazier, toppling it and catching the wailing fire demon in her fist as flames spread across the bookshelf. Michael’s heart pulsed dark blue in her hand. The room was suddenly very still but for the crackling of flames.

“I want Howl’s heart, but I suppose this one would do. It seems terribly sweet,” she said.

“Don’t you dare,” Sophie snarled, stepping forward.

“Oh—” Angorian said, tightening her fingers, and Michael choked, one hand flying to his chest. Sophie froze.

_ “Sophie,”  _ Howl said warningly, hand on her shoulder.

Angorian loosened her grip. “Good.”

“This isn’t going to end well for you,” Howl said coldly. “You know it can’t. The Witch practiced magic for centuries; this boy is an apprentice. Trade her heart for his and your power will be a tenth of what it is now—and no match for mine. I’ll destroy you in an instant.”

“And destroy his heart with me?” Angorian said. Howl did not respond, but his face must have betrayed something. She began to laugh. “They called you heartless Howl. What a lie that was!” She lifted Michael’s heart over the bucket of water, just long enough for Sophie to see what she planned, then dropped it.

Howl let the frying pan fall with a clatter, diving across the room. The heart hit the water with a hiss like a doused match, but Howl knocked the bucket over, sending heart and water spilling across the floor and snatching it up from the spreading pool.

Michael crumpled, Sophie ran to catch him, and in three great strides Angorian reached the now unprotected hearth.

“Sorry, Calcifer,” Howl said, sprawled on the floor, Michael’s heart cupped like a bird in his hands. Lucine was barely a wisp of white flame flickering between his fingers. Michael hardly breathed, limp as the jigsaw man in Sophie’s arms.

_ What a mess, _ Sophie thought. Then a great heat welled up within her. She had spent a lot of time fixing up this castle! She had swept and scolded and listened to stupid lies and told stupider lies and fought curses and Angorian had no right to come in and burn it all to the ground. She trembled with anger.

“Your human is very sorry,” Angorian cooed to Calcifer, sifting ash through her glowing fingers as she prepared to uproot Calcifer like a particularly pesky weed. Sophie very carefully slid Michael down and crept forward.

“I heard him the first time, thanks,” Calcifer said. “And he’s not  _ mine.” _

“Whose is he, then?”

Sophie smashed the frying pan into Angorian’s shining head. She, Howl, and Calcifer cried out in three-part discord. Howl’s heart fell to the ground and Calcifer streamed after. “Get out of my house,” she bawled, and slammed the pan down again.

Angorian seized the frying pan and it glowed red-hot in Sophie’s hand, making her drop it with a yell. “You are a nuisance!” she hissed.

Sophie changed plans. “Over here,” Calcifer said weakly, and she grabbed him, scooping the flaming coal of Howl’s heart into her apron and running to the bathroom. Fire spread up her skirt.

“None of that!” Sophie said, and it went out. Angorian was hot on her heels. Sophie swept a jar of sweet-smelling hair oil from the shelf and it shattered across the doorway. Angorian’s feet flew out from under her; Sophie tackled her into the bathtub and turned the water on full blast.

A cloud of hissing steam filled the room as soon as the water hit. Angorian wailed. Sophie slipped and slid out of the bathroom, yanking the door shut and grunting “stay” before running to Howl. He blinked, barely conscious.

“Sophie?”

“Who else?” she said. “Come finish off the Witch’s fire demon!”

He tried to stand and stumbled, landing on his elbows, still trying to keep Michael’s heart aloft. “Get up,” she begged, pulling at his shoulder. “We need to get rid of Angorian!”

“Help—Michael,” he groaned.

Calcifer pulsed in the folds of Sophie’s skirt, urgent. “You have to break the contract. Give him back his heart.”

Sophie’s own heart skipped a little in her chest. “Is it safe?”

“It is if it’s you,” he said. “You can speak life into anything, I’ve seen it.”

“Then have another thousand years,” she told him, pinching him from the deadened heart like a flower bud from its stem. Free as a kite, Calcifer whirled up through the chimney. “I don’t know how to do this,” she warned the half-conscious Howl.

“Never stopped you before,” he muttered, eyes closed, but he found her hand and guided it to his chest. Brushing aside the realization that her hands were young and smooth, she focused on the drumming of his heartbeat against her palms, finding the spot where it belonged.  _ There. _ With a few stern instructions, his heart sank beneath his skin, slipping into place like a missing puzzle piece.

As soon as it did, he doubled over, grimacing. “Ahh!”

“Watch out!” Sophie said, taking his other hand to keep him from crushing Michael’s heart.

“Have a little pity,” he said. “It’s been a long time— _ ow _ —since I’ve had a heart. There’s a lot to process.” Tears welled under his squeezed-shut eyelids.

“Well, there’s a fire demon locked in your bathroom, so process fast,” she said.

“Just one more second.” Water streamed down his cheeks as he opened his eyes.

Howl stared at her like he had never seen her before. The marble-ish glassiness was gone from his gaze. He had, she thought for the first time, rather pretty eyes. His cheeks flushed with a healthy color. She could feel his heart thudding under her palm. “It worked,” she said, a little lamely, because it was the only thing she could think of. “Now come help me!”

Steam washed under the bathroom door, and the thumping and crackling behind it assured them that Angorian had survived her shower, but Sophie’s command to the door still held. No matter how Angorian threw herself against the door, it didn’t budge. Howl and Sophie converged on Michael’s body. “Here,” Howl said, handing her Michael’s bruised purple heart.

“I can’t put it back!” she said, handing it back.

“You just did mine,” he said.

“Yes, but that was just because—that was  _ different.” _

“We need to find Lettie,” Howl said, scrambling to his feet. “She can do it.”

Sophie was aghast. “There’s no time to go to Mrs. Fairfax’s!”

“Not that Lettie! The one at the bakery.”

“Don’t you dare run out into Market Chipping and leave me with three fire demons and your half-dead apprentice!” she said, more sharply than she meant to, because Howl looked so scared. “I thought you were some kind of powerful wizard?”

“It can’t be just anyone that gives him his heart back, Sophie,” he said. “It has to be someone he loves dearly. Otherwise it can go horribly wrong, and—”

_ “Howl,” _ Sophie said. Angorian threw herself futilely against the bathroom door. Still, Sophie’s magic held. “Michael loves you! You gave him a home when he had no one, you taught him magic and took care of him, and heaven knows you’ve done a terrible job sometimes, but you  _ tried, _ like no one else in his life. He caught Lucine because he thought you wanted him to, he fought the Witch to help you—you’re the closest thing to family he has. Do you think that doesn’t  _ count?” _

“He left,” Howl said.

“And he came back,” Sophie said firmly. “Hurry.”

“How underhanded of you, saying all this when you know I’m emotionally compromised,” Howl said, but the hysteria in his voice was minimal, all things considered. He spread his hands, and Lucine and the heart rose between his palms. He spoke a thundering, unintelligible string of words, and they separated, as if snipped by invisible scissors. “Sophie,” he said, and she understood, catching Lucine. She braced for a burning against her skin, but the fire demon had shrunk to the size of a candle-flame, barely a scrap of heat.

“Do you want to stay here?” she whispered.

“I just want to return to the sky,” Lucine said sadly.

“Then go,” Sophie said, heartfelt. “Go back to the stars.” With a little crackling sigh, Lucine faded. Sophie returned her attention to Howl as he pressed the bruised purple heart to Michael’s unmoving chest.

Naturally, that was the moment that the bathroom door gave way. Angorian crawled out, ashy all over, smoke curling from her body. It was hard to imagine how she had ever been mistaken for human. “You’re going to regret that,” she hissed.

“Not now, please,” Howl said, beads of sweat forming on his brow as Michael’s heart slowly sank between his ribs.

Angorian staggered forward, dropping soot as she neared them, leering. Sophie, who was by now thoroughly sick of the fire demon’s presence, lobbed the closest thing—the flowerpot that held the forks—with all her strength at the fire demon. They hit with a sound like a tea set smashing to the floor. “He said  _ not now!” _

Michael’s heart disappeared into place. He took a deep, heaving breath, and opened his eyes. Howl pulled him into a tight hug. “Ouch,” he mumbled.

“I’m very glad you’re alright,” Howl said fervently. Sophie retrieved her old stick from where it had fallen under the chair, and then helped Michael to his feet.

The fire demon saw that she was outmatched and whined piteously. “Dear Sophie, you hardly left me anything to deal with,” Howl said, then told Angorian sternly, “You’ve had your time. I might feel sorrier for you, if you hadn’t tried to consume me and kill my friends.” Holding out one hand, he spoke a clap of thunder, and the castle trembled. In his hand appeared a shriveled, cinder-black heart. He put his palms together and it crumbled to ash. With a final doused-match hiss, the fire demon shrank from a human shape to a haze of flame to a smear of ash on the floor.

“That’s going to take some scrubbing to get rid of,” Sophie muttered.

Howl began to laugh. “Is that all you can think of?” He picked up a fallen pitcher of orange juice and emptied the little bit that remained into a glass. “There we are then! Nice night at the castle!” He shook his head with a look so affectionate that the room brightened. It was only when she turned away that she saw Calcifer was back.

“Too windy out there,” he said, settling familiarly onto the low-burning logs in the hearth. “Did you know your bookshelf is on fire?”

Howl splashed his orange juice at the bookshelf and Sophie flicked some water from the spilled bucket. “Enough of that,” she said. The flames went out, revealing long black scorch marks, and as she watched, the fire-weakened shelves bowed, then gave way, sending books, papers, assorted jars, and the skull tumbling across the floor.

“That mess will keep until tomorrow,” Howl decided. He looked insensibly happy. “I think this calls for a celebration. Michael, you’re old enough to drink, aren’t you?” He checked under the cupboard. “Never mind, the bottles are broken. Toast of a different kind, then, if Calcifer will allow it.”

“Hmm,” said Calcifer, stretching up delightedly. “Alright, but I’m going to burn all the edges.”

True to his word, the toasting was uneven and hastily done, as Calcifer was disinclined to stay in the fireplace for more than a few minutes at a time now that he could drift over to the collapsed bookshelf or singe Howl’s shoulder or settle onto the jumbled pile of books near the door. At that, Howl shooed at him. “Up, old blue-face, those are from the library.” Sophie went to stack them away from danger, but Howl beat her to it, so she only saw a few of the curious titles— _The Murder at the Vicarage,_ _Collected Poetry of John Donne, Much Ado About Nothing_ —and an envelope that slipped out, which Howl tucked into his suit.

Everyone’s stories came out in fits and starts. Michael was quite anxious about Sophie’s new appearance, fearing she had been hit by another curse, but took the truth well. “Lettie’s sister!” he said, shaking his head. “And a witch, too!” Then of course Sophie insisted Michael tell them how he had been for the last few weeks, and then she had to tell Howl and Calcifer of their journeys to the past and how the curse had come true, and Calcifer eagerly filled Michael in on what had happened during the fight from the moment Angorian had seized Lucine to the moment Sophie had freed the fire demons.

“And after that?” asked Michael.

“Then I put Howl’s heart back, and he put yours back, and we got rid of Angorian,” said Sophie.

“You’re thoroughly underselling our accomplishments, dear Sophie,” said Howl. He scrubbed at his tattered sleeve, where he had spilled jam. “‘I put Howl’s heart back,’ she says, like it’s an ordinary Thursday chore. Sweep the castle, go to market, put Howl’s heart back—”

“It’s Wednesday,” she corrected.

“Thursday.” He flicked his jammy rag. “It’s after midnight.”

“Morning already,” she said, surprised. But he was right. As her giddy relief faded, weariness was taking over—not the aching exhaustion to which she had grown accustomed, but the comfortable sort of tiredness that comes after hard work. And she wasn’t the only one; Michael kept yawning, and Howl’s slouch was slipping from languid to half-asleep. Even Calcifer had sunk into the embers, purple eyes closed to slits. Sophie wrapped her arms around her knees, fighting to keep her eyes open. Somehow it felt very important to be here now, and remember it all—the mushy drifts of paper and ashes and spilled seasonings on the floor, the fire-warmth on her cheek, the smell in the air like someone had been cooking.

Howl caught Sophie’s eye and gestured to Michael with his chin. The boy had nodded off. Sophie reached over and gently shook his shoulder. “Let’s get you to bed. We’ve got your room still made up.”

“We’d better move our other guest, then,” Howl said, and Sophie remembered the headless man.

“Who?” asked Michael sleepily. Sophie and Howl traded looks with each other, then Calcifer.

“It’s a long story,” said Howl.

“Prince Justin,” said Sophie. “Sort of.”

“You could say he’s not himself,” said Calcifer, with a raspy chuckle.

Sophie closed one eye, trying to remember which blankets were available. “We could make him a bedroll down here.”

“Or just prop him on a chair,” said Calcifer. “I don’t think he’ll care.”

This felt uncourteous to Sophie, but she had to admit it would be easier. “It’ll just be for one night,” Sophie said, as much to justify it to herself as anyone else. “And he can have my bed after, once I’ve left.”

There was a great crack of a log splitting in the fireplace. “Left? To where?” asked Howl.

“Well, home,” said Sophie. She turned to Calcifer for support, but he did not rise to her defense. “I kept my part of the deal. Now that the curse is broken—” She could not find the right words to finish the sentence. She almost wished she still looked old; she felt strange and vulnerable with her own young face again, and all eyes on her. Her cheeks were hot and she was certain her bewilderment was clear as day. From the beginning, she had not planned to stay, and she was sure no one had expected her to. But they were all  _ staring _ so.

“The deal,” Howl echoed.

Michael looked upset. “You will still visit, though, won’t you?”

“If I can,” said Sophie, looking at Howl, who looked away. Her discomfort made her testy. It was as if she had just let in an unwanted guest, tracking mud and taking up too much space. Howl ran his hand through his hair distractedly.

“Of course. Yes, I plan to keep the castle near Market Chipping for a while, so you may walk up when you like,” said Howl. It was the polite tone he usually reserved for customers. “If you’re leaving tomorrow, you’ll want to sleep soon, too, I imagine. Michael, will you help me move the body downstairs?”

“I can help,” said Sophie indignantly. Had he forgotten she was young and well now? “Let him rest.”

He didn’t take offense at her tone. She wished she had—she itched for a fight to clear the air. “As you’d like,” he said. That dull silence persisted as they climbed the stairs. It was much easier to carry the jigsaw man down than it had been to take him up, now that Sophie’s youthful strength had returned and the difference in height between her and Howl was not so large. In fact, while her grey head had barely reached his shoulders before, now she could have easily rested her chin on his shoulder. She did not, of course. It took all her focus to balance the body’s deadweight without misstepping. They put him in the chair by the fireplace, where he sagged limply, and Sophie draped her shawl over his shoulders to mask his headlessness. Michael shuddered.

“I’m glad he’s not staying in my room,” he said.

“You don’t mind having him down here, Sophie?” Howl asked.

She was making a face. “It’s fine. It’s only for tonight, then you can put him on my bed.”

“Of course.” Howl surveyed the mess once more, then clasped his hands together. “Well. Goodnight.”

There was a chorus of goodnights and Michael trudged upstairs. Howl stood by the mirror in the bathroom, taking out his earrings and combing his hair. Sophie waited on the edge of her bed. She had been borrowing his comb for a while, as she had not thought to bring one from home, although she was always careful not to leave her wiry grey hairs as evidence.

As he walked past, he wordlessly offered the comb.

Sophie could not seem to fall asleep after. She stretched out on her thin bed and her feet hit the bottom of the stairs. Rolling over, she watched the dim red of the fire on the ceiling. She rose and went to the bathroom, where there was still a slick smear of hair oil by the door, though Howl had vanished the broken glass of the jar by one method or another. It cheered her some to look in the mirror, to pull at her unwrinkled skin and braid and unbraid her soft red hair. “Cheer up, girl,” she told her reflection, in the tone one might use when addressing a surly old mare. “Everything’s turned out the way it should.”

By now all was quiet upstairs. Sophie walked over to the headless man, taking his hand and turning it over to feel his pulse. It was as faint and steady as before. “You’ll be sorted out soon, I’m sure,” she told him softly, then sighed.

What she could not understand was why she was not happier with the breaking of her curse. It had been her mission for months. Her sisters would be thrilled. She threw herself back into bed with a huff. She had been so happy earlier. When Howl’s heart slipped into place, when he opened his eyes, when suddenly it felt like everything would be alright. She pressed her palms to her cheeks, remembering the sensation of his heartbeat in her hands, then rolled over and buried her face in her pillow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PHEW the truth comes out!! well, most of it (:  
> regarding the books howl brought from the library--murder at the vicarage is a mystery by agatha christie starring the elderly spinster detective miss marple, who howl thought sophie might appreciate; collected poetry of john donne is obviously a nod to the author of the "go and catch a falling star" poem curse, and much ado about nothing bc sophie & howl's dynamic reminds me so much of beatrice & benedick's!


	10. Which concerns the erstwhile hat shop

She must have fallen asleep for a few hours, because she was woken by a pounding on the door, a dog barking, and Lettie’s irate voice. She had gotten word of Sophie’s visit to Martha and turned up at the castle intent on rescuing her stolen sister, with a ferocious-looking dog in tow to make sure she was listened to. Scarcely had she cried out in surprise at the sight of Sophie uncursed and well when the dog pulled loose, seizing the skull from the ground in its teeth. Michael and Howl ran downstairs to find Lettie and Sophie trying to pry the skull free, in vain. With a bang, the dog, skull, and nearby headless man disappeared and two dazed-looking men stumbled into being.

It was a portentous start to the day. Michael apologized profusely to Lettie for not writing to her, to which she responded that she hardly expected him to and who on earth was he? Martha rushed in to warn Sophie of Lettie’s impending rampage but was so distracted by Michael’s return from Kingsbury that she did not notice Lettie had already arrived. A quarter hour after  _ that, _ Fanny appeared asking for Howl regarding some matter that she forgot completely at the sight of her daughters, and indeed, Sophie could hardly get a sensible word from her. Not that Sophie blamed her; she felt the same. It was a new and jubilant chaos. Howl shook hands with the newly reincorporated Prince Justin and Wizard Suliman, bowed to Fanny and Martha, and nodded awkwardly at Lettie, before excusing himself upstairs to change into real clothes. Sophie remembered she, too, was still in her nightgown, and hurried to the bathroom to change. When she emerged, Fanny took her by the elbow gleefully.

“We’re going to see the King! Prince Justin has invited us to the palace as thanks.”

“Oh,” said Sophie, who had never particularly cared to see the palace, and moreover had seen her fill of elegant architecture of late. “How exciting.”

Lettie took her other arm. “After that I’m going with Wizard Suliman to look for his magic. He says it’s all hidden in a scarecrow on the moors—you must ask him about it, it’s such a story. You’ll come too, won’t you?”

By the door, Michael turned the knob to red, explaining the device eagerly to Martha. “Yes, alright,” said Sophie, letting herself be swept along as the party spilled out into the streets of Kingsbury.

Just as she reached the door, she heard a raspy voice shout, “Sophie! Your shawl!”

She unlinked her arms from Fanny and Lettie. “Just a moment,” she said. Her ragged shawl had been around Wizard Suliman’s shoulders earlier, but it must have fallen and then been put up to keep from being trampled; it was folded neatly on the table. “Thank you, Calcifer,” she said. “I thought maybe you’d gone out again.”

“I was here. Just didn’t want to scare your mother,” he said. “She was shrieking enough as it was.”

“How thoughtful of you,” she teased, throwing the shawl over herself. Something fell out and hit the ground. An envelope. Frowning, she turned it over. “What’s this?”

“An envelope,” said Calcifer.

“Yes, but who put it there?” she said. It had not been sent by post; there was no address. And it had already been opened. Was this the envelope Howl had tucked away last night? She took out the paper inside, scanning its contents.

“Are you almost ready, dear?” Fanny called from the door.

“Nearly,” said Sophie. “I—uh—left something upstairs.” Replacing the paper in its envelope, she mounted the stairs two at a time, skirt gathered in one fist.

She found Howl sprawled tragically on his bed, facedown. “Not now, Michael,” he said at the sound of the door opening. His voice muffled against the dust-covered bedspread; he had not changed from his nightclothes.

“You bought the hat shop,” said Sophie. Howl sprang upright, strings of dust clinging to his chin, mouth forming wordless shapes as she thrust the deed forward. “This was in my shawl.”

“Yes, I’m aware,” he said.

“It’s yours,” she said. “You made those cloaks. You earned the money.”

“Consider it your pension.” He did not move to take it.

“I don’t want to sell hats,” she said.

“Lucky,” he said. “Those aren’t included.” She was sure he was only waiting for her to go so he could continue to wallow, and also that he thought himself wonderfully noble and generous for this gift. She wanted to shake him.

“Fanny’s waiting downstairs,” she said, shaking the deed to the hat shop at him. “Take this.”

“No thank you,” he said.

“I’ll put it on the table downstairs,” she threatened.

“And I’ll send it by post the minute you’ve left,” he said.

“Then I won’t leave,” she said.

“Be my guest.”

“I don’t  _ want _ to be your guest,” she said.  _ “Or _ your cleaning lady.”

“Neither do I!” He threw his hands out, almost laughing. “Ye gods, Sophie! I don’t know what else I can do without resorting to sonnets, and I distinctly recall those being forbidden! I got my heart back only to find you’ve been in every corner of it, knocking down cobwebs and sorting the silverware and turning everything upside down. I don’t want you to go, if you can possibly stand to stay, and I swear I’ll be horribly in love with you—but if you’re set on going, for heaven’s sake, take the hat shop. It was always for you.”

Sophie looked at him—with his shirt rumpled and his face dust-covered, color in his cheeks and eyes bright—and she believed him. The realization slotted into place in her chest as though she had known for a long, long time. “Oh no,” she breathed. “Martha was right.” She felt so light that she could hardly believe she was real. “Howl, come with me. We have to tell them,” she said urgently, seizing his hand.

“Tell them what?” said Howl, racing down the stairs with her.

“That I’m not going with them!” she said. At her voice and the pounding of footsteps, Fanny turned, and Michael and Martha leapt up from the stoop.

“Sophie?” asked Martha, closest to the door.

“I’m staying,” she said, out of breath. “For good. I’ll visit often, I promise. It was lovely seeing you.”

“Enjoy Kingsbury,” added Howl helpfully. Before anyone could form a response, Sophie shut the door.

“You’re staying?” Calcifer called from the fireplace.

“I’m staying!” she said.

Howl’s smile was dazzling as the sun. “Let’s go see your hat shop,” he said eagerly.

“Ours,” Sophie said, spinning the knob to green down. “And it’s not going to be a hat shop now.”

Gusts of air whipped Sophie’s hair as they sprang out onto the green moors. Howl’s white nightshirt billowed like a sail. “What will we sell, then?” he shouted over the wind. Still clutching each other’s hands, they went down the path to Market Chipping, faster and faster, until they were running through waves of grass. She felt that she could run seven leagues without tiring.

“Maybe flowers!” she shouted.

Howl let out a whoop of delight, and they raced down under a brilliant blue sky.

When Michael came in that evening he lingered on the doorstep before shutting the door and leaning against it, beaming. He had over his shoulder his bag from Mrs. Pentstemmon’s and a little bundle of letters he had kept under his pillow there.

“Was that Sophie’s family I heard out there?” asked Calcifer.

“It was,” said Michael, shrugging out of his fine purple suit and hanging it in the closet. They had walked him back to the castle, at the insistence of Lettie—no,  _ Martha. _ Martha! He swung on the end of the bannister and cast himself onto the lowest stairs. “Calcifer, I think I’m in love.”

“Oh, you too?” said Calcifer.

“There seems to be a lot of it about,” Michael said happily. He tucked the letters into his pocket. “Howl and Sophie are out?”

“Up to trouble, no doubt,” said Calcifer.

“There’s a lot of that about, too,” said Michael. “But that’s nothing new.” They were all staying, then. The thought burned cheerily in his mind. He had hardly noticed the dull detachment that came with heartlessness, but he was bursting with his regained heartfulness. Calcifer coming back—sleeping in the castle again—Sophie deciding to stay—the sun shining in Kingsbury—kissing Martha on the doorstep—every new happiness went off like fireworks in his chest. “And Howl is really serious this time?”

“That fool couldn’t be serious if his life depended on it,” said Calcifer. “But he means it, no doubt about that. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve had to put up with in the past few weeks. Mooning and swooning and his heart floundering around in me like a rabbit in a bathtub the whole time. I haven’t had a moment’s peace.” The fondness in his voice was unmistakable, and Michael was satisfied.

“Good,” he said. “I don’t fancy having Fanny after us in a month. I like her too much already. Oh! Help me remember, I invited the Hatters to tea the day after tomorrow. It seemed the proper thing to do.” It also seemed like the only thing to persuade Lettie—the real Lettie—not to camp at the castle until Sophie’s return. “I can introduce you to them then. You’ll like them, I’m sure. They’re all as funny and stubborn as Sophie.” He rose from the stairs and added a log to Calcifer’s fire. Calcifer may complain that he chattered, but Calcifer liked to complain, and Michael liked to chatter, so he resumed the habit with ease. “I know  _ I _ like them. Lettie—older Lettie, my Lettie’s really called Martha, you can’t mix them up once you’ve seen them—is apprenticed to a witch in Upper Folding and we’re going to trade spells when she comes for tea. Martha enchanted herself to look like Lettie, without hardly any training at all, so she could sneak away and apprentice at Cesari’s. Just imagine! I couldn’t have done anything like it when I first got here. Remember how many spells I ruined when I started my apprenticeship? I was sure I would be back on the street in a week.” He shrugged. “And here I am instead. It’s like—oh, I don’t know. I thought you only got one chance at family, and that was it. Do stars have families, Calcifer?”

“Only,” said Calcifer, exceedingly smug, “the very special ones.”

Michael turned his attention to the fallen bookshelf and spilled spices that lingered from the night before, despite scattered efforts this morning to neaten. He scrounged for the ingredients of a cleaning spell. 

“I bet Sophie’s not going to be the cleaning lady anymore,” said Calcifer.

“Thank goodness,” said Michael fervently. “Do you think that will stop her?”

“We can only hope,” said Calcifer. 

Michael cut a rune in the air and the bookshelf creaked slowly back to the wall. Another gesture, and the broken shelves mended themselves. One by one, he shooed the fallen jars back to their places, and the rubbish into the fireplace. The magical exertion left him winded. He put his hand over his heart, feeling its quick pulse. “It was easier doing magic with Lucine,” he said wistfully. “I’ll miss that.”

The fire crackled as the rubbish caught. “Easier, maybe, but that magic’s yours,” Calcifer said. “You’ll figure it out again, don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” Michael said. And for once, it was true. He opened the door to the moors and then carefully carried over Lucine’s vacant brazier, tipping out the ashes in a long stream that vanished into the summer grass as the castle trundled onward. Then he sat at the workbench, humming as he composed a letter to Martha.

A week later, a flower shop opened in Market Chipping under a banner that said  _ Hatter Fresh Flowers Daily. _ The front window was a paradise of flowers of every shape and color: foxgloves, white lilies, clouds of lupines, delicious-smelling jasmine, all fresh and fragrant and steaming against the glass. The townspeople were delighted at the return of the eldest Miss Hatter, and enchanted by her flowers. “You’d think there was magic at work to see it all,” approved old Bessie from the hat shop.

The next day the banner had been restyled as  _ Jenkins Fresh Flowers Daily. _ No one saw the change happen, but all assumed it must have been carried out by the spry young boy who was always dashing to Cesari’s to trade posies for a pastry, or perhaps Miss Hatter’s handsome assistant. Miss Hatter declined to identify the mysterious Jenkins.

The day after, the banner read  _ Hatter-Jenkins Fresh Flowers Daily. _

“The problem with having Hatter first,” said Howl, entering through the door that linked to the castle, “is that it’s confusing. Anyone who glances at the sign will think we still sell hats. It’s bad for custom.”

“It’s bad for custom that you were a wanted criminal until last week,” countered Sophie, taking the bucket of irises from his hands. The King had pardoned Howl the day Prince Justin returned, but old wanted posters kept slipping into the castle somehow. In fact, Sophie knew that there was one folded up and tucked under the loose brick in Calcifer’s hearth at that very moment. The thought made her lips curl up.

“That’s a wicked smile if I’ve ever seen one, dearest,” drawled Howl.

“Your bad influence, I’m sure,” she said. It seemed like she was always smiling, these days. It was half an hour to opening, and morning light washed over tables of flowers cut from a wild garden in the Waste. The smell of lavender hung sweet in the air. She had put her quilt-making efforts to rest and, with some needlework and some magic, fashioned patchwork yellow aprons from the fabric instead. Howl’s clashed brilliantly with the blue-and-silver suit he wore, and there were petals caught in his hair. She watched contentedly as he searched the wrong cabinets for scissors. “Sorry, what were we discussing?”

“Hatter-Jenkins,” he said. “Misleading. And it’s too long. An aesthetic disaster.” She kissed him. She had aimed for his cheek, but he turned so she brushed his lips, and then she had to do it properly.

“Perhaps you’re right, this once,” she said, and kissed him a third time. For luck, of course.

“Luckily,” he murmured against her cheek, “I know the solution.”

They closed the shop early that day and married in the field of flowers. Martha brought a cake from Cesari’s and Lettie picked flowers for Sophie’s hair. Howl produced a pair of rings, which did not match and were both too big for Sophie’s fingers, but with a few words one shrank to fit. Afterwards, Michael earnestly told them that they had given the worst vows he had ever heard, which likely had to do with the way Howl had caught Sophie’s eye halfway through his and botched it entirely. Sophie was ludicrously happy.

The next day, they changed the sign to  _ Pendragon Fresh Flowers Daily. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first, thank you for reading! i've had so so much fun with this story and i hope you have too!  
> second, i forgot to mention sooner that the title of this fic comes from the lovely final couplet of "The Old Astronomer to His Pupil" by sarah williams: _Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;/ I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night._ i put it in as a temporary title when the fic concept was shorter and sadder, but then i got attached to it :)  
> and finally, though i decided against a chapter 11 ft a funeral and wedding part two electric boogaloo (howl and sophie again, this time in wales!) as it felt like the start of a whole other story, i will give you the fate of sophie's library book:
> 
> Howl held the train of Sophie's wedding dress as she stepped off the bus in front of the library. They had snuck out the back ten minutes after the reception started, but Sophie figured she might as well return _Advanced Quilting Patterns_ while they were in this world.  
> "I love weddings," said Howl. "We should make a tradition of them. I think these were your best vows yet." She had forgotten what she was saying and started reciting the price list for flower arrangements at their shop. It was a cheap shot; Howl, after all, had been the one that drove them to the wrong chapel. "No, darling, don't go inside. Turn it in through the slot so they can't charge you for stealing it."  
> "Next wedding and I'll bribe Martha to object to the union," said Sophie, dropping the book into the slot.  
> "I think she would do it for free," Howl said cheerfully. "But I'll win her over yet."  
> "I'm sure you will," said Sophie. "You can be rather charming, when one doesn't know better."  
> "Mrs. Nose," he said, smiling, "that was almost romantic."


End file.
